Preamble

The House met at Eleven o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

ATTACK ON INFLATION

11.4 a.m.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement.
The House will recall that 10 days ago my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made a statement on the attack on inflation, and announced the determination of the Government to bring down the rate of domestic inflation to 10 per cent. by the end of the coming pay round next autumn, and to single figures by the end of the year. He referred to the consultations with the TUC and the CBI which had been taking place directed towards achieving an agreed voluntary policy with, in particular, effective arrangements about pay consonant with that cost of living target. He undertook that by the end of this week the Government would make a statement about those consultations, setting out the Government's judgment as to whether a voluntary policy, which was both viable and effective had been reached.
The House will have seen the statement endorsed by the General Council of the TUC on Wednesday, and regardless of party the whole House will pay tribute to the extent of the TUC's achievement. Yesterday I described it as an achievement unexampled in peace or war by the free democratic trade union movement in this country.
The Government have decided to accept an overriding limit of £6 per week for pay settlements during the next pay round, a figure consistent with the aim of reducing the rate of inflation to 10 per cent. by the late summer of next year. Our policy is based on consent and willing co-operation within our democracy. We reject, for the reasons I have so fre-

quently stated, the idea of statutory policies based on criminal sanctions against workers.
My right hon. Friend and I have been in close consultation with the CBI and the TUC during these 10 days and we have set out our policies for the attack on inflation in a White Paper, copies of which will be available in the Vote Office when I have sat down. In the White Paper we have set out the Government's proposals, directed to strengthening the fight against inflation right along the line, covering both the public and the private sectors.
The Government have decided that the cut-off for the increase of up to £6 shall be £8,500. We are also proposing some transitional arrangements to deal with inequities which would otherwise arise for certain groups which are expecting shortly to implement their annual agreements under the present TUC guidelines. It is, however, a requirement of the new proposals that no settlement can be approved within 12 months of the previous settlement.
I must make clear that while the Government accept the proposal for a flat-rate limit of £6, this is not an entitlement—it is a maximum. It will have to be negotiated by established collective bargaining procedures, and it is not a requirement on employers who simply cannot afford to pay it.
The Government are concerned—as the TUC has shown that it is—that unions or groups of workers who make a settlement early in the pay round should legitimately be able to demand protection against the action of other groups which, on past experience, might prejudice their position by negotiating considerably bigger settlements later in the round.
We intend to ensure observance of the new pay policy by employing the full battery of weapons available to which my right hon. Friend referred 10 days ago. As employer, the Government will ensure that all settlements in respect of its employees in the Civil Service, the National Health Service and the Armed Forces comply with the pay limit. They will call on all other public sector employers to do the same. As paymaster and treasurer, on behalf of the taxpayer, for publicly-owned industries and services, the Government will use all their


powers to see that settlements are made within the pay limit. They will ensure that the money available is strictly controlled and that none is available for the payment of increases over the agreed limit.
This means that for the nationalised industries and services, no money will be made available for excess settlements, whether by subsidies, whether by permission to borrow or by loading excess cost on the public by increasing prices or charges. There will be a strict limit on expenditure. Those seeking to negotiate settlements above the agreed limits, by whatever means, must face the certain consequence that there will be an inescapable cut-back in the current expenditure of the board or corporation concerned, directly affecting employment in that industry.
There must be no less stringent control in respect of local authorities' spending. There will be urgent discussions with the new Joint Consultative Council and with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.
In this as in other areas, legislation will be necessary to supplement and strengthen the policy we have worked out with industry. The Bill will be introduced next week.
So far as local authorities are concerned, legislation will be brought before Parliament to enable the Government to restrict payment of rate support grant to individual local authorities so that no grant is forthcoming in respect of any part of a settlement made in breach of the pay limit—any part of the settlement, not just the excess. No rate support grant increase will be made in such cases. Moreover, unless there is a tighter restriction on the numbers of staff employed, the Government will further have to restrict the scale of provision of grants.
In addition, if this proves necessary, as a further sanction the Government will be prepared to use their powers to control local authority borrowing, including access to the capital market, to reduce the capital programmes to individual local authorities to offset any excess expenditure on pay settlements.
In the private sector the Government will use all their powers against any breach of the pay limit. The Bill will

relieve employers of any contractual obligations which would otherwise compel them to increase pay by more than the limit.
In the field of price control the Bill will ensure that where an employer breaks the pay limit, not only the excess but the whole pay increase will be disallowed for the approval of price increases. This sanction will also be applied to nationalised industry prices.
From now on, the Government will not give discretionary assistance under the Industry Act to companies which have broken the pay limit. Contracting Departments will also take account of a firm's record of observance of the pay limit in their general purchasing policy and in the awarding of contracts.
The Government believe that these measures are necessary to secure compliance by all employers with the policy I have stated, but if our faith in the agreed policy is disappointed, if there are any who seek to abuse a system based on consensus and consent, or to cheat by any means, the Government will not hesitate to apply legal powers of compulsion against the employers concerned, to ensure compliance. We must have these powers in reserve.
Legislation has therefore already been prepared, for introduction if need be, which, when applied to particular cases, would make it illegal for the employer to exceed the pay limit. If the pay limit is endangered, the Government will ask Parliament to approve this legislation forthwith.
The fact that pay increases are to be negotiated within a flat-rate limit will rightly give preference to the low-paid worker. But the House will see in the White Paper the extent to which the Government intend to act to restrain prices. In present circumstances a general price freeze is not realistic and would simply depress investment and aggravate the unemployment problem. But the Government's policy on prices, in addition to acting as a sanction against recalcitrant employers, is also designed to provide the necessary assurance to employees, required to justify the flat-rate pay limit.
The Government will therefore continue the present strict prices control


enforced under the Price Code. We shall introduce legislation to extend the control powers beyond 31st March 1976, when they would expire. As the pay limit comes into full effect, the Government intend to ensure that the rate of price increase for a range of goods of special, strategic importance in the family expenditure will be held to about the 10 per cent. target. The CBI and the Retail Consortium, which we have consulted, are prepared to enter into immediate discussions with the Government to achieve this price limitation programme.
The Government have decided also to finance many more consumer advice centres to assist consumers who have complaints or queries. We shall encourage more work on local price comparisons and will accelerate the programme of price display and unit pricing.
To assist with the cost of living during this period, and particularly to protect the living standards of lower-income families and pensioners, the Government have also decided to delay the phasing out of food subsidies which was announced in the last Budget. This will involve an expenditure of an additional £70 million in the period 1976 to 1977. Local authority rents were frozen by the Government between March 1974 and March 1975 but increases are now in the pipeline because of pay increases and other inflationary influences. For the period 1976 to 1977 the Government propose to limit rent increases so that rents do not rise faster than prices generally. This will mean that on the average rent increases next spring will be of the order of 60p a week rather than £1 a week or more. For this purpose the Government will provide an extra £80 million.
The Government believe that this comprehensive programme—with any further action which we deem necessary—will bring about in a fair and equitable manner the desperately needed reduction in the rate of inflation.
We reject massive panic cuts in expenditure. Some which have been suggested would not only have acted directly to increase the cost of living and so aggravate the inflationary problem, but would have added to the numbers unemployed. The action we are proposing will improve employment by restoring confidence, promoting investment, and increasing the competitiveness of British industry, both

in export markets and in the saving of imports.
Unemployment has already reached an unacceptably high level in this country, and it is small comfort to record that in the deepest world recession since the 1930s unemployment has so far risen less in this country than elsewhere or that we have been more successful in maintaining the level of industrial production.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has already announced increased opportunities for training and retraining, as well as measures to help people to move to newer employment and a plan for a temporary employment subsidy to assist firms located in areas of high unemployment. The Government will introduce the temporary employment subsidy at the earliest possible moment. I must make it clear, however, that this subsidy will not be available to companies which exceed the pay limits. We shall also take, as the White Paper makes clear, special temporary measures to encourage the training and employment of school leavers and other young people in industry.
I said that we reject the panic measures in the field of essential expenditure, including the social services. The best guarantee against a reduction in social standards is to bring the rate of inflation down to the level we have indicated for next summer and beyond. But we certainly will continue our efforts to contain the demands on resources made by public expenditure programmes.
We have made clear our intention to apply cash limits, as opposed to limits based on resources measured at theoretical constant prices, as a means of ensuring financial discipline, in central Government, local government, and publicly-owned industries and services. Urgent work is in hand to ensure the extensive use of cash limits in the coming financial year.
Without trespassing unduly on the time of the House, it is not possible in this statement to set out the full range of Government controls and actions which we intend to use to fortify the agreed policy as set out in the White Paper.
But I must leave the House in no doubt about the Government's total will and determination to use to the full all the powers we hold, in both the public and the private sector. This is not all.


The legislation which we shall bring before the House next week will significantly extend the powers at the disposal of the Government to strengthen controls, to close loop-holes, to frustrate cheating, and generally to secure compliance with the new pay limits.
When hon. Members study the White Paper I hope that they will be ready to endorse its concluding words:
The Government seek the support of the nation in breaking the inflation which threatens our economy. The measures the Government, the TUC and the CBI are taking are designed to last right through the next pay round until price inflation has been brought down to single figures and we have reached agreement on how to arrange our affairs so as to avoid a resurgence.
This is a plan to save our country. If we do not, over the next 12 months, achieve a drastic reduction in the present disastrous rate of inflation by the measures outlined in this document, the British people will be engulfed in a general economic catastrophe of incalculable proportions. If we do succeed, as we are resolved to do, we can turn with fresh energy and hope to tackle the fundamental problems which will still face us in constructing an economy in which high pay is earned by high output.

Mrs. Thatcher: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is not possible to make a preliminary assessment of this long statement until we have seen the White Paper accompanying it? Is he aware that one thing is perfectly clear; namely, that one of the reasons why we are having to face these measures now lies in the disastrous policies of the Government over the past 16 months? The Prime Minister has frequently said that his main strategy was to fight inflation. In fact, his policy was to further it, first, by the social contract, which permitted increases which are now the subject of policy changes, and, second, by the other part of the social contract which encouraged enormous increases in public expenditure, themselves an engine for producing inflation.
Is the Prime Minister aware that we have no experience in the Western world of going from 25 per cent. inflation to 10 per cent. in a year? We do not know what strains and stresses that will cause. Is it not obvious that one of the problems the right hon. Gentleman will have to face is concerned not only with going into the policy but with coming out of it? Is he aware that we are concerned

that one of the problems he has given himself is that of coming out of the policy after a flat-rate increase? Does he appreciate that the tendency will be to restore differentials at all costs at the end of this period?
May I now put some questions about the statement. First, what is the date of commencement of the wage restraint? Second, what is the date of commencement of the new price changes? Third, may I ask what the Prime Minister means by "£6 per person"? There is a certain ambiguity in the statement itself and between the Chancellor's statement and the Prime Minister's statement. From this statement it looks to me as if the limit is not upon the individual but upon the global amount of the group. If the right hon. Gentleman looks carefully at some of what he has said he will see that it seems as if it is the pay settlement as a whole and not the limit on the individual.
There is an ambiguity in what the right hon. Gentleman says about the pay limits in the nationalised industries. Is he aware that the Chancellor said last week that there would be a cash limit for wage bills in the public sector, whereas what the right hon. Gentleman has said today is that if the cash limit for wage bills goes above the amount, current expenditure will be cut in that industry. [Interruption.] It is as well that we know what a £6 limit means—whether it is on the individual or whether it is on the group—and how it will work in the nationalised industries.
Will there be any special cases allowed in either the public or the private sector? Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us what is his assessment of public expenditure changes? Is he aware that it looks to me as if in the statement he has some increases in public expenditure as a result of increasing subsidies?
May I deal briefly with rates? It looks from a quick glance at the statement—there was not time to read it completely before the right hon. Gentleman made it—as if he can cut down the rate support grant but does not have power to hold down rates. As they are a sensitive subject, it seems as if, under the arrangements, increases in local authority expenditure could be borne by the ratepayer.
Does the right hon. Gentleman propose to make any policy changes with regard to increasing nationalisation?
What happens if an employer holds out against a strike for an amount more than the permitted figure? What will the Government do to help? It is obvious that in a state of 25 per cent. inflation we may all have to accept policies which we would otherwise find unpalatable. May I make it clear that from the Opposition's viewpoint our main strategy is to reduce inflation. We welcome the Government's conversion to that aim.

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Lady will understand if I deal with the more serious parts of what she said—

Mr. Mates: Cheap.

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Lady made some very serious points. She also put some pertinent questions which I shall try to answer. I understand, as she said, that the House will require a great deal more time, particularly time to study the White Paper, which is now, I understand, available. She said that this was all due to the present Government. She must be aware that many of the problems this country is facing—the most serious ones, such as the balance of payments, inflation and unemployment—were all endemic before the change of Government in March 1964.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Eight and a half per cent.!

The Prime Minister: No policies were adopted for dealing with those issues except in some cases to make them worse.
The right hon. Lady referred, perfectly fairly, to its being the policy of her party to seek, first, in dealing with the problems of inflation, to slash public expenditure. She made that point fully, and from her point of view effectively, in the recent economic debate before the Easter Recess, although she failed then to say what reductions in expenditure—

Hon. Members: Answer.

The Prime Minister: I am as entitled as was the right hon. Lady to make these points. I do not intend to reply to all her questions.

Mr. Gorst: Just the easy ones?

The Prime Minister: Those solutions which the right hon. Lady did specify in that debate would have meant a chronic increase in the rate of inflation and would have imposed sacrifices on the vast majority of families in the country.
The right hon. Lady said that to get the rate of inflation down from its present year-on-year rate to the target that I have announced will cause some strain and stresses in industry and the community. With that I have to agree fully. This is inevitable. It must be the duty of all of us in this House to try to minimize those strains and stresses and help those whose burdens are greatest as a result of things that have already happened and as a result of what happens in the next year.
The right hon. Lady was also right when she stressed the difficulty in any such policy of coming out of it—the "re-entry" problem at the end of a period. The Government had to go through the agonies of the re-entry problem following the statutory policy of the previous Government and that caused far more strains and stresses than anything else the country has seen.
With regard to the question about the date for commencement of wage restraint, the answer is that it will be from 1st August. The right hon. Lady will see what is said in the White Paper in relation to the 12-month rule, particularly in relation to the settlements that have already been made. The answer to her question relating to the price changes is that those will start right away. As she knows, action has already been taken to restrain dividend increases by the order announced by my right hon. Friend.
The right hon. Lady asked whether the limit would be on the individual or the group as a whole. This is a complicated question which is dealt with in the White Paper. The answer I would like to give now is that it will be measured as to the individual, but the special and complicated problems of increments already agreed which must count against the £6 limit and cease within that figure will have to be negotiated with the group as a whole. I think that is fair.
The right hon. Lady also referred to cash limits and welcomed what the


Chancellor had said and what I have said. The introduction of cash limits will clearly put a big strain on all sectors, particularly the nationalised industries, local authorities and so on. She asked about special cases. The answer is that there will be no special cases. The right hon. Lady wanted estimates of expenditure. I am not sure whether she referred to the public sector borrowing requirement. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor will deal with that in the debate that is being planned.
As for rates I have referred to the necessary cut-back in expenditure and the steps we are taking to ensure that that occurs. We shall take very serious sanctions against local authorities both interfering with their borrowing and in other ways, through disallowance of the increase, and so on. This will help to cut down their expenditure. If local authorities were to continue spending more than they can afford, this would be bound to affect the rates, which are rate-rebated, and the increase in rates depends upon that. However, the right hon. Lady will be the first to agree, from what she has said previously—and I entirely agree with her—that the biggest problem affecting the rates today is that of inflation which has caused the rates in cash terms to soar as they have done over the past two or three years. It is inflation with which we are dealing in these proposals and this will, therefore, benefit the ratepayers as much as the general community.

Mr. Thorpe: Is the Prime Minister aware that although all hon. Members will want time to study these proposals the country will at least welcome the fact that the Government have recognised that we cannot continue as we have done and that new policies are required which have a statutory back-up? Secondly, the Prime Minister has said that employers will not have to make the £6 payment if they simply cannot afford it. To whom do they make application to prove their case, and, if they have proved their case, what assistance do they get from the Government if faced with a strike?
Thirdly, what is the compulsion that the right hon. Gentleman has in mind for employers? Does it include criminal sanctions, which he has rightly ruled out

in the case of employees but has left somewhat vague in the case of employers'? Will he reactivate Part IV of the 1966 Prices and Incomes Act for that purpose?
Finally, is not the position that the Government, through the social contract, have relied upon the TUC to implement their pay policies and that they are now shifting the burden to the employers? Can the Prime Minister say why he believes that one group would be more effective than another in discharging what is essentially a job of Government?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman is quite wrong on the last point. I am sorry that he did not pay tribute to the tremendous advance by the TUC in what it will be doing with its own unions. [Interruption.] This is not a laughing matter. The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath), worked very hard on this for very many more weeks than we have been meeting the trade unions on this matter.

Mr. Cormack: Perhaps the Prime Minister should pay tribute to him.

The Prime Minister: At the time I paid tribute to his patience in trying to secure this. The reason why he did not secure it was that the then Government were not prepared to take the other actions that were necessary.
I thank the Leader of the Liberal Party for his welcome of these measures. I should like to answer his question about employers. He raised the case of employers who simply are unable—because of conditions of trade, because of their liquidity position and their earnings and profits—to pay the full £6. He asked whether they have to make a case and whether they can ask the Government to arbitrate, conciliate or help in any way. The answer is "No". This is left for negotiation between them and the trade union. The right hon. Gentleman will know that in some industries which have suffered from acute depression in recent months the unions have been taking very small increases—less than £6 a week—because they recognise the dangers facing the industry.
In the legislation that we shall introduce this week there are no criminal sanctions against employers. The sanc-


tions relate to a wide range of the measures I have announced today, including price controls and the rest. In my statement I referred to powers in reserve, which would be brought before the House for enactment only if the pay limit policy were endangered for any reason. Then we would have to introduce legislation which is already prepared. We would have to ask the House to pass legislation of a different character relating to employers who pay above the limit.

Mr. Arthur Bottomley: Is my right hon. Friend aware that some of us, as in the past, believe that what he has proposed today will not go far enough to solve our economic problems? This applies to both Conservative and Labour Members. Does he not agree that we should concentrate our investment on essential industries such as energy, steel, computers and chemicals? Further, will he cause an urgent investigation into how we can save imports and produce more food from the land? Does he not agree that these are fundamental requirements that should be tackled now?

The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend will be aware that the statement today dealt specifically with the inflation problem and the action needed for the year ahead. The whole House would agree with what he said about the need to concentrate investment on essential industries. This is what we are doing in the area of energy. For example, we have embarked on the largest ever programme for the coal industry, there is the new decision to go ahead with the British system in nuclear policy after years in which no decision has been taken, and we have North Sea oil and gas.
My right hon. Friend will be aware of the massive funds being provided through the National Enterprise Board for assisting investment in private industry where it has lagged behind for so many years under successive Governments. He will also know of the scheme announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget Statement for the regeneration of particular industries which have fallen behind. There is the help we are giving, for example, to machine tools, foundries and the rest. This is exactly what my right hon. Friend says he wants us to do, and this is what we are doing.

Mr. George Gardiner: Is the Prime Minister aware that his measures will be judged by the public in the long term according to whether they are fair? Will he tell us what is fair about penalising employers who yield to strikes while having no sanctions whatever against those who organise strikes? Will he say what is fair about giving preferential treatment to council house tenants regardless of their income and what is fair about fixing a cut-off limit which will hit many middle-income earners, particularly in the South-East, where living costs, rail fares and so on are high? What will he say to those people when they feel that they are being made the fall guys for his policies yet again?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman is certainly right in saying that these measures will be judged in the country by what is fair. First, he referred to possible sanctions on employers. I have referred to the Price Code and to the powers in reserve which is not before the House and which will not come before the House unless action takes place that requires them. The hon. Gentleman should have realised by this time that criminal sactions against workers do not work in this country or, as I have been able to discover, in any other democratic country. They might work once, for a short time—the Americans found this to be the case and we have found it.
If the hon. Gentleman is advocating that policy—and the leader of his party has made it very clear that it is not the policy of his party—he should realise that there was a turning point in our history when the five dockers were imprisoned after which no one with any common sense could even propose this policy. That would have brought—[Interruption.] We can remember that the Official Solicitor helped right hon. Gentlemen opposite to defend them. Whether they still defend that policy I do not know, but they must realise that it would have brought all the dockers out. The same would happen if we tried to proceed by measures which have been tried by successive Governments in this and other countries and which have totally failed.
Conservative Members must agree that we have done more for the owner-occupier than the previous Conservative Government would have done if they had


stayed in office. Interest rates were increasing to 13 per cent. and a Conservative Government could not have stopped it. They would not have known how to do so.
We believe that, with the 5 million families living in council houses and in new town houses, to have followed the policy of the previous Conservative Government would have been wrong. That was why we had the freeze for as long as we did. We believe that over a period these rents should rise in accordance with prices generally. It is right to inject further subsidies to stop rents going to the level they would go to in order to catch up, which would have been the policy but for the need to hold down the cost of living. Every policy put forward from the Conservative benches means a higher cost of living which would make any policy unworkable.

Mr. John Mendelson: Will the Prime Minister accept that there will be widespread recognition, in spite of all the pressures upon the Government to come to a wholly one-sided solution directed against wage earners, that the Government, and particularly the Ministers directly concerned, have commendably kept in close contact with the representatives of wage earners and working people and deserve the support at least of Labour Members for having done so? Will he at the same time also realise that the solution proposed will still bear hardest upon the lower income groups and those who depend on wages?
Will my right hon. Friend therefore consider the following two proposals? There must be an attempt to have a price freeze on some—not all—selected prices, as has recently been done on 10 essential goods and products in France, and is being done quite successfully. There is no reason why it should not be attempted by the British Government. Secondly, if we are making such serious inroads into the right of free collective bargaining, why do not the Government take immediate powers to direct investment to national needs and national purposes?

The Prime Minister: I thank my hon. Friend for what he said. We have tried to proceed by consensus and consent. That explains the time it has taken to produce this White Paper. We have

been very much chivvied and criticised by right hon. Members of the Opposition about the time, but I hope they would agree that the time was well spent to get agreement—as my predecessor tried to do—with the unions and to get it over a very wide range from the CBI.
My hon. Friend referred to the fact that the lower paid will be bound to be prejudiced by this, but I think he would agree that the flat-rate limit that is suggested will help them as compared with people who are in fact better off. Of course, it will cause great problems about differentials and the rest, but it is designed to help the lowest paid first, and what we are doing on prices will help them as well as people who are in receipt of various social services benefits.
My hon. Friend asks for a price freeze on a selected list, but he will have noticed in my statement—and he will see them spelt out much more fully in the White Paper—the plans which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection is working out, to get a list of goods of paramount importance to the average family and the types of family who are hard up against it, and to try to help on those prices. My hon. Friend will be glad to know that the Retail Consortium and the CBI will co-operate fully with my right hon. Friend in that.

Mr. Hordern: Will the Prime Minister recognise that public expenditure is rising by some 42 per cent. over the corresponding period of last year? As in his statement today he announced further increases in public expenditure for this year, and as the cash limits on public expenditure apparently will not apply until next year, will he now give an estimate of what public expenditure will be during the course of this year, and what the borrowing requirement will be at the same time?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman's last question was the question put by the right hon. Lady the Leader of the Opposition, and I said that my right hon. Friend will be dealing with all these questions—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."]—in the forthcoming debate. The hon. Gentleman referred to the increase in public expenditure. The figure he quoted was, of course, in cash terms. This is, of course, partly due—obviously, both


centrally and locally and in the public industries—to inflation to a considerable extent, to pay increases and the rest.
But I have not heard from the hon. Gentleman or anyone else on the Opposition side of the House what they would cut in public expenditure, except those things such as subsidies which are restraining the increases in prices. Obviously, their policies would make the whole thing unworkable by forcing up the cost of living.

Mr. Jay: Does my right hon. Friend agree that though these measures are fully justified in present circumstances they will not succeed for long unless this breathing space is used to introduce more fully-thought-out long-term measures to restrain pay and price increases before the £6-a-week dam bursts next year?

The Prime Minister: I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. He will see that we refer to that particular problem in the White Paper. As I have said, successive Governments have found this. It is the problem of coming out, as the right hon. Lady said, of a policy of this kind which creates even greater strains and stresses than the period of the policy itself. We found that, and I think it has been generally the experience.
Certainly this time must be used by all of us, and by the whole House, to work out not merely the best means of dealing with our re-entry problem, but a more lasting formula for dealing with this problem. The initiative by the TUC if of great value, as is, equally, the co-operation of the CBI directly with the TUC and with the Government. I am sure that Opposition Members—those of them who are talking about inequity between employer and worker in these matters—would like to know that the CBI itself rejects sanctions against workers and says that this should be done through pressure on the employers. That is the CBI view.

Mr. Maurice Macmillan: Will the Prime Minister accept that if he makes price control a great deal stricter this is liable to put smaller businesses in a particularly difficult position in financing their stock and work in progress and in increasing turnover, which no doubt he would wish to see them be able to do? This applies especially to the smaller

retailer if the policy is to bear hard on prices, which are particularly important on the retail side to the family budget.
Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman referred to relieving employers of contractual obligations. If employers are put in the position of having to make people redundant, in the way which the right hon. Gentleman indicated he would be encouraging in the public sector, will he tell the House firmly now that they will be protected from action in tribunals and other courts for constructive dismissal and other measures which are contained in the Employment Protection Bill?
Thirdly, despite the phrasing of the last words in his statement, when he referred to
measures that are being taken by the Government, by the CBI and by the TUC
will the Prime Minister accept that responsibility lies in his hands and in those of his Government, as responsible to this House, and not, despite any need for consensus, with the CBI or the TUC?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir, I fully accept what the right hon. Gentleman said at the end of his question. The responsibility is fully in the hands of the Government as responsible to the House. We have sought to work through a consensus and agreement with the TUC and the CBI. I believe we were right to do that. I believe that the whole House welcomes the fact that we have been trying to do that. I do not in any way disagree with the right hon. Gentleman. I endorse what he has said. The responsibility falls fairly and squarely on the Government, in this policy as in others.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to the difficulties of some hard-hit firms in being able to maintain employment. I had those in mind when I said that the £6 was not an entitlement. He will know what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection has done by way of easement, because of the very difficult liquidity position, in relation to price control and in other ways. What I was stressing today, and what she is concerned with, is that people in that situation or a more prosperous situation, must face tighter price control as a sanction if they pay more than the norm. In the cases referred to by the right hon. Gentleman, they are unlikely to do so.
As to the contractual problems, the right hon. Gentleman will find these and related questions—some he mentioned—very fully dealt with in the White Paper.

Mr. Bidwell: Will my right hon. Friend agree that no matter how this is dressed up, it turns away from the declaration of our party at the last General Election, and that the Government are now embarked upon a dangerous, perilous course? If the inability to hold or reduce the prices of essentials for working people continues and results in a reduction of the standard of living of our people, there will be an explosion in our population which will reverberate throughout our entire movement.
The key, therefore—because this is only a very short-term course, which I am sure my right hon. Friend would agree is the case, as he has referred to this—is when we get a situation, hinging on the fact of the continuing rise in the cost of living, in which the employers say to workers "We cannot pay increases to compensate for the rise in the cost of living because your Government will not allow us to do so."

The Prime Minister: I do not agree with my hon. Friend. Referring, as he did, to the question of profits, he must be aware of the sharp fall in profit margins over the past year, partly through outside causes and partly because of the strict controls introduced by the previous Government, continued and intensified by the present one. I totally disagree when my hon. Friend says that this is contrary to what we put before the country. In the manifesto, which I know very well, as he does, we said:
But as it is proved that the Government is ready to act—against high prices, rents and other impositions falling most heavily on the low paid and on pensioners—so we believe that the trade unions voluntarily (which is the only way it can be done for any period in a free society) will co-operate to make the whole policy successful.
That is what the TUC has done this week and which we endorse.
Some of the criticisms made by my hon. Friend about interference with free collective bargaining are not so much of the Government as of the TUC. I should have liked to have heard him,

with his distinguished record in these matters, give full backing to the TUC, because that is the essence of the matter.

Mr. Powell: After so many similar experiments and their invariable failure, why have Ministers not yet learned that the attempt to deal with inflation by direct limitation of prices and wages leads only to further and still further controls which in the end collapse, leaving the nation as helpless as before in the face of inflation?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman knows that we have debated this matter many times—in his case going right back to the 1950s. I do not accept his analysis and, still less, what I would regard as the dangerous consequence of adopting such a policy.

Mr. Thompson: While appreciating the seriousness of the situation, may I ask whether the Prime Minister realises that the economy of Scotland is now in better shape than that of England? Does he further realise that many Scots workers have lower wages than their counterparts in England? Will he therefore recognise that these measures will freeze Scots workers' wages at a comparatively lower level than those of their English counterpart? Finally, will he in all candour admit that he is asking Scots workers to make comparatively greater sacrifices for the common good of the United Kingdom as a whole?

The Prime Minister: I thank the hon. Gentleman for the tribute he paid to the improvement of the economic position of Scotland during the last 16 months. I discussed these matters with the Scotish Labour Party in Edinburgh early this week. Whilst still far too high it is a fact that unemployment in Scotland, compared with unemployment in the United Kingdom as a whole, is the lowest that it has ever been since figures were first recorded, and it is falling rapidly.
The hon. Gentleman may not be aware that on comparative wages Scotland has come up to about 99·5 per cent, of the earnings rate for the United Kingdom as a whole. It is our intention to see that all these measures, including now the Scottish Development Agency, continue to help that improvement.

Mr. Horam: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is a good chance of these proposals being regarded as both fair and tough and that the essential basis of consent will be preserved as it has been in the negotiations with the TUC? Does my right hon. Friend agree that, to the extent that the norm is adhered to, not only will inflation be reduced but employment, investment and the position of the poorest in our community will be preserved?

The Prime Minister: I thank my hon. Friend for what he said. I entirely agree about the relationship between inflation, unemployment and the standard of living. This is what I tried to tell the National Union of Mineworkers earlier this week. I said that if they went for higher pay it would only be at the expense of employment particularly in the hard-hit coalfields and that what is true of the coal industry is true of the nation generally. I think that my hon. Friend put his finger on the problem.

Mr. Emery: Does the Prime Minister realise that his statement will be welcomed in many parts of the House as the sign of a complete U-turn of Socialist policies? Will he therefore categorically state that what he said means that no more than £6 a week can be obtained in the next 12 months by the coal miners? I ask this question because if the NUM accepts this policy there is a considerable chance that many more people will also accept it. Lastly, will the Prime Minister say that it would appear to be wrong to pay social security benefits to strikers who are striking against the £6 limit which is what the Government are trying to bring about?

The Prime Minister: Apart from the hon. Gentleman's last few words, with which I totally disagree, I should like to thank him for the welcome that he gave to the statement, and particularly for stressing the great importance of what we have seen in previous pay rounds—namely, a repercussion of one industrial settlement early in the pay round on others. Many unions and their members are very worried that, if they settle early in the pay round for a reasonable settlement on a voluntary policy, somebody else will get the advantage of bigger settlements later in the pay round. The hon. Gentleman was right to stress the

position of the mineworkers here. In answer to the Leader of the Opposition I said that we were not legislating or providing in the White Paper for any special cases.

Mr. Heffer: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is not entirely true to say that the TUC agreed by consent in a free way to what has happened? This has been negotiation under duress with the threat that, if the TUC did not agree to such a statement, legislation of a strict kind would be brought in. Therefore, it is not true to say that the TUC arrived at this position with complete consent.
Is it not also true that 13 members of the General Council of the TUC—not counting four others who were not present but would have voted in a similar way—voted against this decision?
Irrespective of the way that this matter is dressed up, does not this proposal come down to some form of incomes legislation similar, despite the fact that the emphasis is on the employers, to what we have had in the past?
Is my right hon. Friend aware that many hon. Members on this side of the House consider this proposal to be a real U-turn, a move away from our manifesto commitments, and that we shall look at the Bill very closely indeed? Frankly, if it is a complete move away from our policies, we will not support the Government on this matter.

The Prime Minister: There was consent by the TUC. The negotiations were conducted entirely freely, not under duress or the threat of legislation. The duress under which the Government, the TUC, the CBI and the whole country are working and under which the negotiations were conducted was the fear of unemployment and inflation. It was that duress which led the TUC to take an initiative, and we discussed this matter with it. I am not sure from what my hon. Friend said whether he agrees with the TUC policies. It would be helpful if those who criticised what the Government have announced following negotiations with the TUC said whether they agreed with the TUC or rejected what it is doing.

Mr. Graham Page: Having regard to what the Prime Minister said about restricting borrowing by local government,


is he now going to withdraw that piece of legislation which will involve over £500 million a year borrowing by local government—the Community Land Bill?

The Prime Minister: The answer to that question is "No, Sir." With regard to what I said about borrowing, the right hon. Gentleman will see that more clearly stated in the White Paper. It will be a sanction against any local authority which feels tempted to pay more than the pay limit.

Mrs. Jeger: Will the Prime Minister tell us how the limitation will affect our equal pay policy? In cases where the male rate is increased by the £6 maximum there will be women doing equivalent work who will need a higher rate of increase if the legislation is to be implemented. Will he assure the House that there will be no erosion of our policy on this matter?

The Prime Minister: When I said that there would be no special cases I was referring to particular industries, unions, and so on. The only exception to the whole policy is the implementation of the equal pay legislation. That is reaching its final stages over a five-year programme from legislation introduced by my right hon. Friend the present Secretary of State for Social Services. That will go on. In the legislation that we introduce there will be no remission, repeal or change in the equal pay legislation.

Mr. Gorst: Can the Prime Minister say how his measures will affect the self-employed? He will be aware that many millions of people, including the professions and people running one-man businesses, are self-employed. In particular, does he regard these people as workers who will not be subject to criminal sanctions or as employers who will?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman will find that this matter is dealt with in paragraph 24 of the White Paper. He will no doubt wish to study it and give the House his views on the matter when we debate it. Paragraph 24 reads:
Last year self-employed people whose expenses amount to less than 10 per cent. of turnover were exempted from the Price Code. They will now be brought back under the Code. A number of self-employed groups

who are remunerated in part from public funds…will continue to be outside the Price Code, but in settling their remuneration the Government will take account of the pay limit.

Mr. Ward: I accept the need to use the rate support grant mechanism to make local authorities play the game next year, but will my right hon. Friend undertake to examine with the Joint Consultative Council the local authorities the role of those authorities which for years have taken the rate support grant generously given by the Government and have notoriously under-spent and pocketed the difference? In the development of consumer advice centres—a step which I believe will be greatly welcomed throughout local government—will he undertake to ensure that provision is made in the rate support grant next year for very expensive, usually town centre, developments?

The Prime Minister: I am sure that my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for the Environment, Scotland and Wales, in their negotiations with the Joint Consultative Council and the Scottish Convention, will bear in mind all that my hon. Friend has said. No doubt my hon. Friend will want to monitor the results of the discussions in the light of the two problems which he has mentioned.

Mr. Anthony Grant: Can the Prime Minister confirm or deny reports that, as an example, the salaries of Cabinet Ministers will be cut?

The Prime Minister: There has been no discussion as yet of this problem. I cannot anticipate whether the suggestion will be made or what result would emerge from collective discussions on this matter.

Mr. Kinnock: Will my right hon. Friend accept that the last vestiges of voluntarism in this package and the intense loyalty of trade union leaders to the Labour Government make the package, in so far as it has been accepted, acceptable to the majority of the trade union leadership in the TUC General Council and will commend it to a large part of the Labour movement? However, does he recognise that this package presents the Government, and indeed the whole of the Labour movement, with a tragic dilemma in that if the reserve powers are used all hope of voluntarism


and co-operation will thereby be abandoned, and that if they are not used those powers and the influence which my right hon. Friend and the Government seek in order to sustain the value of the pound and many other considerations will not be effective and we may find ourselves within a short time faced with the same difficulties but with the most important shot of voluntarism gone from our locker?

The Prime Minister: I thank my hon. Friend for what he has said. I think he is right about some of the considerations in the minds of people in the trade union movement in making these remarkable proposals.
With regard to what my hon. Friend has called reserve powers, I repeat that we are not putting into legislation, as was in the final version of the 1966 legislation, a reserve power in the sense that legislative power is taken but not invoked until there is an opportunity for it to be debated in the House on an affirmative resolution. What we have got and have drafted is what I call powers in reserve so that if the pay limit is threatened by individual action or in any other way we should not hesitate to ask the House to put the legislation into immediate effect. So it is a power in reserve, but the House is not currently being asked to introduce legislation of the kind that I think my hon. Friend has in mind.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. This is a day for Private Members and I must preserve their rights. I can allow these exchanges to go on for only quite a short time.

Mr. Body: Does paragraph 46 of the White Paper, relating to monetary policy, mean that the Government accept the proposition that there can be no inflation without a surfeit of money? If that is so, if severe curbs are to be imposed on incomes, can the right hon. Gentleman say how he can prevent in the next 12 months the surfeit of money from going to those who have the good fortune to have assets to sell?

The Prime Minister: Paragraph 46 of White Paper, headed "Monetary Policy"—it is very short—is not an attempt to contribute to the vast amount of literature

on the theory of monetarism, Friedman-ism, monetary controls or anything else. It is a short practical statement on how we propose to act. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that, under the present Government, the growth in money supply in the past year and a half has been very much reduced compared with the situation before we took office. At the same time the House will know tht one of the current problems has been the inadequate take-up of bank and other money available for long-term investment in industry. We want to encourage such investment. But the statement in the White Paper does not enter into theoretical controversy. It is a statement of policy.

Mr. Ogden: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, having taken some time to bring forward the White Paper, all that he and his Cabinet require is a little determination and a little courage and that we need some time to explain the purposes to our constituents and he will receive not only from his electors and mine on Merseyside but from every elector in the constituencies all the support that he requires? He has asked for a year for Britain. Now we should give it to him.

The Prime Minister: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he has said. I know that he will be saying in his constituency, which neighbours mine, what I shall be saying in my constituency this evening. I also welcome the fact that my hon. Friend, who has considerable experience of one of our great industries, the mining industry, speaks with great authority when he makes remarks such as those he has just made.

Mr. John Davies: The Prime Minister will realise that the formula which he has chosen to restrain the level of wages and incomes is bound to exacerbate the problem of differentials during what he calls the re-entry period. What provision is he making for continuing the pay relativity work carried out under the framework of the Pay Board which he so unwisely disestablished last year?

The Prime Minister: I said that we must not only make the policy effective but get a clear and viable policy for the later period. A great deal of work is being done on these questions, but the right hon. Gentleman will know from


his great experience as a Minister and when he was at the CBI and elsewhere that the problem is that if there is a percentage which is adequate for a lower-paid worker, if higher-paid workers say that they want the same percentage they will increase the cash differentials. This is one problem which has never been solved by all the pay research and relativity work which has been done.

Mr. Ashton: Will my right hon. Friend say what will be the situation for a group of workers who genuinely increase their productivity by 15 per cent.? Will they be restricted to a 10 per cent. rise or will they be able to get round the policy by becoming self-employed and going on the "lump"?

The Prime Minister: They will be increasing their productivity in a way which will enable them to gain more than those who do not in the period following this year. In the past, while there have been genuine productivity agreements, particularly where there has been over-manning and so on, we have seen some "phoney" productivity agreements paid for and we have decided that we cannot stretch the policy to take account of that in the coming year. At the end of that year, those workers will be in a very good position to get the benefit of what they have done.

Mr. Jessel: Can the Prime Minister say what has happened to the social contract which he and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have repeatedly said was the only way of dealing with inflation? Or does he agree with Emerson that
consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"?

The Prime Minister: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman approaches great national problems with silly little quotations like that. This is an extension of the social contract on the initiative of the very people who introduced the original contract. They know and the House knows that the Government have honoured their side of the social contract to the full. Some of the most statesman-like leaders in the trade union movement have taken the initiative in saying that we must fight inflation or the worst-off and poorest people will suffer, and investment and employment will suffer. That is why they have proposed this extension of the social contract, which I am sure

the hon. Gentleman, when he gives his mind to it, will greatly welcome.

Mr. Tomlinson: Will my right hon. Friend accept that while there may be theological differences on some aspects of the package, it will be welcomed by his hon. Friends in the House and by people outside? He said in his statement that there would be limitations under the Industry Act for firms which broke the social contract. Can he, therefore, make clear how this will apply to British Leyland, bearing in mind the amount of public money that the rescue operation there will entail?

The Prime Minister: I thank my hon. Friend for what he has said. The question of the Industry Act is a very difficult one, but I think that what we have said on the subject is right, although it sticks in the gullet a bit. If the Government, with the authority of the House, find £1 million to help maintain employment in a hard-hit area, they do not intend that half, or more than half, of that money should go to a pay claim in excess of what the country or the firm can afford. It is right for us to take this line. British Leyland will shortly be under a very much more direct and special relationship with the Government. I believe that it has already reached a settlement recently on the basis of the £6 limit. It will be the Government's duty to ensure that the capital investment in British Leyland on behalf of the nation is not frittered away by pay awards over the limit.

Mr. Crouch: While thanking the Prime Minister for still being here after more than an hour, may I congratulate him on having achieved a certain unity in his party? Is he now prepared to move on to the bigger task, in this very desperate time for our country, of achieving unity in Parliament and the country for the policies which are desperately necessary to save the country?

The Prime Minister: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. The way he put them was very much in line with what we have come to expect from him and is in accord with what he has been saying in public and on the radio recently. There may be disagreement in the House about the best way of securing unity, but the unity of the country is essential now in order to attack these common national problems.

Orders of the Day — INTERNATIONAL ROAD HAULAGE PERMITS BILL

Order read for consideration of Lords amendments.

12.12 p.m.

Mr. David Weitzman: Before moving the first amendment, perhaps I might say how much we all miss the sponsor of this Bill, the late Bill Hamling, whom Members on both sides regarded as a great friend and a very respected and worthy Member of Parliament.

Lords amendments considered.

Clause 1

CARRIAGE ON UNITED KINGDOM VEHICLES AND PRODUCTION, OF INTERNATIONAL ROAD HAULAGE PERMITS

Lords Amendment: No. 1, in page 1 line 13, leave out from "journey" to "unless" in line 17 and insert—

"(i) for or in connection with the carriage or haulage of goods either for hire or reward or for or in connection with any trade or business carried on by the user of the vehicle; and
(ii) either between a place in the United Kingdom and a place outside the United Kingdom or, if the journey passes through any part of the United Kingdom, between places both of which are outside the United Kingdom;".

Mr. Weitzman: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
The Automobile Association has expressed concern that, as drafted, the Bill could apply to caravans and other trailers in which goods may be carried when drawn by private cars. There is no such intention. Permits are required only for commercial operators of goods vehicles on international journeys.
The amendment clarifies the position in words which will be familiar because they were used in sections 60(1) of the Transport Act 1968 in relation to operator's licensing.

Question put and agreed to.

New Clause A

POWER TO PROHIBIT VEHICLE OR TRAILER BEING TAKEN OUT OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

Lords Amendment: No. 2, in page 3, line 35, after Clause 1, insert new Clause A:

".—(1) If it appears to an examiner:—

(a) that a goods vehicle or a trailer is being used in such circumstances as are specified in subsection (2) of section 1 above, and
(b) that, without reasonable excuse, the driver of the goods vehicle or, as the case may require, the person in charge of, or the driver of a vehicle drawing, the trailer has refused or failed to comply with a requirement under that subsection,
the examiner may prohibit the removal of the goods vehicle or trailer out of the United Kingdom, either absolutely or for a specified purpose, and either for a specified period or without limitation of time.

(2) Where an examiner prohibits the removal of a goods vehicle or trailer out of the United Kingdom under subsection (1) above, he shall forthwith give notice in writing of the prohibition to the driver of the goods vehicle, or as the case may require, to the person in charge of, or the driver of the vehicle drawing, the trailer, specifying—

(a) the circumstances in consequence of which the prohibition is imposed,
(b) whether the prohibition applies absolutely or for a specified purpose, and
(c) whether the prohibition is for a specified period of without limit of time,
and the prohibition under subsection (1) above shall come into force as soon as notice thereof is given under this subsection.

(3) Where an examiner is satisfied, with respect to a goods vehicle or trailer to which a prohibition under subsection (1) above relates,—

(a) that the goods vehicle or trailer is being used on a journey to which regulations under section 1(1) above do not apply, or
(b) that there is carried on the goods vehicle or, in the case of a trailer, on the vehicle drawing it or by a person in charge of it a document of a description specified in those regulations,
he may remove the prohibition and, where he does so, shall forthwith give notice in writing of the removal of the prohibition to the driver of the goods vehicle, or as the case may require to the person in charge of, or the driver of the vehicle drawing, the trailer and the prohibition shall cease to have effect on the giving of that notice.

(4) Unless the person to whom a notice is given under subsection (2) or subsection (3) above is the person using the vehicle concerned, as soon as practicable after such notice has been given, the examiner who gave it shall take


steps to bring the contents of the notice to the attention of the person using the vehicle.

(5) In the exercise of his functions under this section, an examiner shall act in accordance with any general directions given by the Secretary of State.

(6) Any person who, without reasonable excuse,—

(a) removes a goods vehicle or trailer out of the United Kingdom in contravention of a prohibition under subsection (1) above, or
(b) causes or permits a goods vehicle or trailer to be removed out of the United Kingdom in contravention of such a prohibition,
shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £200.

(7) Subsections (8) and (9) of section 1 above shall apply in relation to this section as they apply in relation to that."

Mr. Weitzman: I beg to move, That the House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): With this, we can also discuss the following Lords amendments:

No. 3, in page 3, line 40, leave out "paragraph" and insert "paragraphs".

No. 4, in page 3, line 45, at end insert:
(eee) a conviction of the holder of the licence or a servant or agent of his under section (Power to prohibit vehicle or trailer being taken out of the United Kingdom) of the International Road Haulage Permits Act 1975".

No. 5, in page 4, line 27, leave out "34" and insert "29(1)".

No. 6, in page 4, line 28, after "1967" insert:
(suspension and revocation of operators' or vehicle licences), after paragraph (d) there shall be inserted the following paragraphs:—
(dd) that the holder of the licence, or any servant or agent of his, has been convicted of an offence under section (Power to prohibit vehicle or trailer being taken out of the United Kingdom) of the International Road Haulage Permits Act 1975".
(2) In section 34 of that Act".

12.15 p.m.

Mr. Weitzman: As drafted, the Bill provides for imposition of fines, on summary conviction, on persons using vehicles without permits when these are necessary and on persons who refuse or fail to produce such permits at the request of an examiner.
Despite these provisions, there is nothing to stop a vehicle being taken abroad on a journey for which permits are required, and, in cases where a forged permit is being used, it is more than likely that the persons concerned would merely withhold production of the forgery until the frontier of the foreign country concerned was reached. Any fine incurred would be regarded simply as an added expense to be taken into account in assessing the charge for the journey.
It is important to prevent vehicles from embarking upon international journeys without valid permits and thus to avoid the many problems which have arisen all too often in foreign countries as a result of use of forgeries.
To achieve this objective it is necessary to prohibit vehicles from leaving the United Kingdom if they do not have the necessary permits. The haulage associations agree in principle. However, unlike the provisions of Section 1(2) of the Road Traffic (Foreign Vehicles) Act 1972, there is no question of detaining the vehicle or prohibiting it from being driven on roads within the United Kingdom.
Subsection (1) provides that an examiner may impose such a prohibition. It also ensures that, in exercising his powers, he should be able to use his discretion as regards the extent and duration of the prohibition.
Subsection (2) requires an examiner who imposes a prohibition to give details of it in writing to the driver or person in charge of the vehicle. This is comparable with Section 1(5) of the Road Traffic (Foreign Vehicles) Act 1972 and Sections 57(2) and 57(7) of the Road Traffic Act 1972. The prohibition will come into force forthwith.
Subsection (3) deals with removal of the prohibition. This may be effected by any examiner provided he is satisfied either that a valid permit for the journey in question has been obtained and is produced to him or that the vehicle is no longer to be used on a journey for which a permit is required. The latter circumstances may arise where, for example, the load is changed to one falling within an exempt category or the place where the goods are to be unloaded is changed to one in a country which does not require British goods vehicles to have permits. Notification of removal of the


prohibition must be given in writing by the examiner to the driver, or person in charge, of the vehicle and the prohibition shall cease to have effect forthwith. This is comparable with Section 2(3) of the Road Traffic (Foreign Vehicles) Act 1972.
Subsection (4) requires the user of the vehicle, if he is not the driver or person in charge of it, to be notified when a prohibition has been imposed on or removed from a vehicle. This is necessary because it is the "user", as referred to in Clause 1(8), who is responsible for matters relating the operation of the vehicle both in the United Kingdom and on international journeys.
Subsection (5) provides that, in exercising his functions under this section, an examiner shall act in accordance with any general directions given by the Secretary of State. This is similar to the provisions of Section 2(4) of the Road Traffic (Foreign Vehicles) Act 1972 and Section 57(11) of the Road Traffic Act 1972.
Subsection (6) makes it an offence to remove a goods vehicle, or cause or permit it to be removed, out of the United Kingdom in contravention of a prohibition imposed under subsection (1). The fine of up to £200 would be additional to those provided for in Clause 1(3) and (4). This provision is important in order to deal with any unscrupulous persons who seek to evade a prohibition notice; for example, by taking the vehicle to a port other than that from which it was intended to embark.
Subsection (7) applies to this section the construction and definitions set out in Clause 1(8) and (9).

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

LITIGANTS IN PERSON (COSTS AND EXPENSES) BILL

Lords amendments considered.

Clause 1

COSTS OR EXPENSES RECOVERABLE BY LITIGANTS IN PERSON

Lords Amendment: No. 1, in page 1, line 12, leave out "to proceedings in a county court and"

12.21 p.m.

Mr. David Weitzman: I beg to move, That this House does agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): I suggest that it will be convenient to discuss at the same time Lords Amendments Nos. 2 in page 1, line 13, after "proceedings" insert:
(a) in a county court
and No. 3, in page 1, line 14, at end insert:
(b) before the Lands Tribunal or the Lands Tribunal for Northern Ireland, or
(c) in or before any other court or tribunal specified in an order made under this subsection by the Lord Chancellor.

Mr. Weitzman: I have been asked to move these amendments by my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bottomley), who cannot be here because of a high honour being conferred on him. He is being given the freedom of the City of London. He agrees strongly with the amendments, which were discussed in detail in another place and which add importance to the Bill which he introduced.
My right hon. Friend's desire was that the litigant in person should have costs in any case in litigation in which costs could be awarded where the person was represented. The amendment would allow the litigant to receive costs in regard to tribunals and gives the Lord Chancellor power to enforce these provisions in appropriate cases in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

Lords Amendment: No. 4, in page 1, line 23, after "proceedings" insert:
(a)".

Mr. Weitzman: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I think that it would be convenient to discuss at the same time Amendments No. 5, in page 1, line 23, at end insert "the Scottish Land Court", and No. 6.

Mr. Weitzman: No. 6 is separate, Sir,
These amendments refer to the Scottish Land Court and proceedings before it.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendment agreed to.

Lords Amendment: No. 6, in page 1, line 25, at end insert—
(b) before the Lands Tribunal for Scotland, or
(c) in or before other court or tribunal specified in an order made under this subsection by the Lord Advocate.

(2A) An order under subsection (1) or (2) above shall be made by statutory instrument and shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resoluation of either House of Parliament.

(2B) In this section "rules of court"—

(a) in relation to the Lands Tribunal or the Lands Tribunal for Scotland, means rules made under section 3 of the Lands Tribunal Act 1949.
(b) in relation to the Lands Tribunal for Northern Ireland, means rules made under section 9 of the Lands Tribunal

and Compensation Act (Northern Ireland) 1964, and
(c) in relation to any other tribunal specified in an order made under subsection (1) or (2) above, shall have the meaning given by the order as respects that tribunal".

Mr. Weitzman: I beg to more, That this House does agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
The only reason why I separated Lords Amendment No. 6 is that it deals not only with Scotland but also with Northern Ireland.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Law Officers' Department (Mr. Arthur Davidson): I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Mr. Weitzman) on having moved these amendments at such short notice. I am sure that the House would also like to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bottomley) on the well-deserved honour, to which my hon. and learned Friend has referred, of being made a freeman of the City of London.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: It is most usual, but I also would like to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman—as a freeman of the capital of Wales to a freeman of the capital of England.

Question put and agreed to.

CONSERVATION OF WILD CREATURES AND WILD PLANTS BILL

(Changed from Wild Creatures and Wild Plants Protection Bill)

Lords amendments considered.

Clause 1

RESTRICTION ON KILLING ETC. PROTECTED WILD CREATURES

Lords Amendment: No. 1, in page 1, line 7, leave out ", takes or reduces into possession" and insert "or takes".

12.25 p.m.

Mr. Peter Hardy: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): For the convenience of the House, perhaps we could discuss at the same time the following Lords amendments:

No. 2, in page 1, line 8, leave out ", take or reduce into possession" and insert "or take".

No. 4, in page 1, line 11, leave out from "killed" to "otherwise" in line 12 and insert "or taken".

No. 6, in Clause 6, page 2, line 18, leave out "reduction into possession or".

No. 7, in page 2, line 19, leave out "reduced into possession or".

No. 8, in page 2, line 21, leave out "reduced into possession or".

No. 9, in page 2, line 22, leave out "reduced into possession or".

No. 29, in Clause 15, page 6, line 17, leave out "taken or reduced into possession" and insert "or taken".

Mr. Hardy: The amendments would delete references to the offence of reduction into possession from Clauses 1, 6 and 15. I am advised that this expression for all practical purposes adds nothing to the meaning of "takes". Its deletion will bring the Bill into line with legislation protecting birds, deer, seals and badgers.
The term "takes" in earlier wild life legislation has been held to mean catching and capturing without necessarily laying the hands on. The addition of

"reduces into possession" might limit the meaning of "takes" in earlier Acts, which would not meet the approval of the House.
The term "reduces into possession" was used in the Theft Act of 1968, but I am advised that it is applicable to game species which are the property of the land owner rather than to wild animals which are not.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendment agreed to.

Lords Amendment: No. 3, in page 1, line 11, after "shown" insert "by him".

Mr. Hardy: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This is a drafting amendment to make it clear that the defendant must prove that he has come by the creature legally. Although it is not usual for the burden of proof to fall on the defence, there is a similar provision in Section 1 of the Protection of Birds Act 1954.
The provision is necessary to make the restriction on possession enforceable, since the prosecution would find it very difficult to prove that a creature had been killed on taken in contravention of the Bill, possibly some time previously, unless the action had been witnessed. In a rural environment, when dealing with wild creatures, the possibility of witnesses of an illegal act is a remote one. If the amendment is not made the Bill will be less valuable than it needs to be.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendment agreed to.

Clause 2

RESTRICTION ON SALE OF PROTECTED WILD CREATURES

Lords Amendment: No. 5, in page 1, line 27, at end insert
and any reference to dead creatures shall be construed as including the skins or skeletons of such creatures".

Mr. Hardy: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Perhaps it will be convenient to discuss at the same time


Lords Amendment No. 18, in Clause 8, in page 3, line 29, at end insert
and in paragraph (bb) of this subsection any reference to dead creatures shall be construed as including the skins or skeletons of such creatures".

Mr. Hardy: The amendment will restrict the sale of the skins or skeletons of creatures of a species specified in Schedule 1. As Clause 2 stands, the sale of live or dead creatures is restricted, assuming that they are the rare creatures mentioned in the schedule, but it is likely that stuffed animals and skeletons would not be covered since they would be regarded as parts of animals rather than of whole animals.
There may be some trade between dealers and collectors in stuffed creatures of protected species which would present  severe threat to the rare creatures dealt with in Schedule 1. Since there are irresponsible individuals—only a small number—with a capacity to wreak havoc with the remaining sparse number of rare creatures, this loophole needs to be closed, and I was delighted that in another place that closure was agreed.
12.30 p.m.
There is a similar provision in the Protection of Birds Act 1954, which has exactly the same purpose as the amendment, and restricts the sale of the skins or the plumage of the protected wild birds.
Lords Amendment No. 18 would give the Nature Conservancy Council the power to license the sale of skins or skeletons for approved purposes. Therefore, we are in no way trespassing upon sensible and necessary educational and scientific activities.
The same loophole exists in relation to the possession provision in Clause 1, although the problem is thought to be serious only when dealers are handling large numbers for sale. The "without reasonable excuse" provision in Clause 2 would provide a defence for actions arising from mistaken identification, but anyone in possession of skins before the passing of the Act would not be committing an offence.

Mr. Carol Mather: I think that this is a useful amendment. It is a little surprising that when the Bill was originally before the House this possible loop-

hole was not spotted, because it is, as the hon. Gentleman has said, included in the Protecton of Birds Act 1954. In days gone by, taxidermists were continually seeking the skins of wild animals for rather a different purpose from what we now consider to be a need. They used, by means of skilfully putting these animals together, to make curiosities. There was the duck-billed pheasant and the horned hare and so on. Those practices are now gone, and the objective of the amendment is purely to deal with the rarity value.
At the same time, inherent in the Bill and in the amendment is the contradiction that the more rare we make these animals by specifying them in the Bill and trying to close these loopholes, the more desirable we make them to collectors. But this amendment, I believe, will certainly deal with the problem that might have arisen had it not been put into the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

Clause 7

VARIATION OF SCHEDULES

Lords Amendment: No. 10, in page 2, line 31, at beginning insert "(1)".

Mr. Hardy: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it may be convenient to take the following Lords Amendments: No. 11, in page 2, line 34, leave out "and" and insert "or", No. 12, in page 2, line 34, leave out from from "order" to "add" in line 36, No. 13, in page 2, line 38, leave out from first "Act" to end of line 39, No. 14, in page 2, line 39, at end insert—
(2) An order made under subsection (1) of this section may apply—

(a) to the whole or to particular provisions of this Act;
(b) generally or to a particular area;
(c) to wild creatures or plants in a particular category; or
(d) at all times or at particular times of the year;
and the order may make different provision for different circumstances.


No. 27, in page 5, line 23, leave out "any area specified" and insert:
a particular area or in relation to a particular category and either at all times or at particular times of the year".

Mr. Hardy: Amendment No. 10, which is very appropriately taken with the other amendments, is perhaps the most important of those made in the House of Lords.
The Bill already allows the Secretary of State for the Environment to add all members of a species of wild creature or of wild plant to Schedule 1 or to Schedule 2 by order. He is also empowered to confer protection in relation to particular provisions of the Act or in particular areas only. The effect of Amendment No. 14, for example, would be to allow him in suitable cases, in addition to the powers he already possesses under the Bill as it passed through this House, to confer protection on particular categories of creature or of plant, or at particular times of the year.
Amendments Nos. 11 and 12 make consequential alterations to this increase in the capacity of the Secretary of State to act with flexibility.
Amendment No. 27 is appropriately linked with these amendments, since it requires the Nature Conservancy Council to offer appropriate advice, which one assumes will persuade the Secretary of State to seek the necessary powers by order.
These amendments would extend the facilities for partial protection and they would increase, as I have said, the flexibility of the Bill for dealing with future eventualities. Although these facilities may never be required—one hopes they never will be—the powers are permissive, and the Nature Conservancy Council need only recommend their use when this would be clearly advantageous.
The House will appreciate that the needs of our natural heritage vary according to regions and perhaps according to seasons. If we are to provide an adequate protection for the rarer members of the range of creatures or of plants in these islands, we need to allow the very responsible and very successful Nature Conservancy Council to be able to pass its advice to the Secretary of State with an adequate degree of flexibility to serve

regional needs, in order that the whole of this country shall have an adequate opportunity of protection.
These matters were discussed, though not at great length, during the passage of the Bill through this House. They were not included during the proceedings here because it was felt, and quite rightly, that the Nature Conservancy Council and the Department of the Environment should have an adequate opportunity to look at the nature of the amendments and their possible effect.
I am delighted that, as a result of the detailed consideration which has been given during the months which have elapsed since the Bill was previously before this House, we now have an amendment which, I believe, adds a great deal of potential value to the Bill. I am very pleased indeed that we now have before us Amendment No. 10 and the amendments which are consequential upon it.

The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Mr. Denis Howell): I am glad to advise the House, on behalf of the Government that we entirely agree with the acceptance of the amendment as recommended by my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Hardy). We also think that this is perhaps the most important amendment to come here from another place. We gave ourselves time in which to examine it, and particularly to obtain the advice of the Nature Conservancy Council.
The amendment adds a tremendous breadth to the Bill in terms of flexibility, giving my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State powers to act regionally, or to deal with timing, and to add species to either Schedule 1 or Schedule 2 at such times in the future as he feels to be necessary. I confirm that we hold in very high esteem the advice we receive from the Nature Conservancy Counciy. I am very glad to hear that my hon. Friend does, too.
I give an undertaking to the House that in exercising this flexibility we shall always consult the Nature Conservancy Council, and be happy to receive representations from any other interested parties before reaching decisions.
In addition to giving the Bill an added breadth and depth, which I welcome very much, I hope that the amendment will,


in the continuing situation which might develop, enable rare species of animals or plants to receive the protection which the House clearly wishes to give to those specific species which are listed in the schedules. I think that this flexibility will be welcomed by all true lovers of the countryside and all those who wish to protect rare species of plants and animals, and will prevent the need for Parliament itself to have to return to these questions from time to time, since the Government will be able, upon representation and advice from the Nature Conservancy Council, to ask my right hon. Friend to make the appropriate decisions by order. I think that this is a very sensible way to proceed, and I hope that it enhances the environment of the countryside in which we live.

Mr. Mather: I agree that this is a helpful amendment. We have already seen the need for flexibility in terms of the need to leave out some creatures and to add other creatures which were originally in the Bill as it was drafted. There are differences of opinion amongst experts, and conditions change fairly rapidly in any consideration of the protection or conservation of these wild creatures.

I support the amendment.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

Clause 8

POWER TO GRANT LICENCES

Lords Amendment: No. 15, in page 3, line 8, leave out
or to offer for sale or to sell".

Mr. Hardy: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to consider the following Lords Amendments:

No. 16, in page 3, line 13, leave out "or to offer for sale or to sell".

No. 17, in page 3, line 15, at end insert—
(bb) for any of the purposes mentioned in paragraphs (a) and (b) of this subsection to offer for sale or to sell or to have in his possession for sale any number of speci-

fied live or dead creatures the sale, offering for sale or possession of which for sale would otherwise be an offence under section 2 of this Act;".

Lords Amendment No. 19, in page 3, line 32, after "(b)", insert "(bb)".

Mr. Hardy: Hon. Members will remember that on Report in this House we made an amendment to cover a loophole in the sale provision in Clause 2. It resulted in the expression
live or dead creature of a species specified in Schedule 1 to this Act
being inserted instead of the phrase "protected wild creature". The amendments in another place made corresponding alterations to the licensing provision in Clause 8, so that Lords Amendment No. 15 is an extremely appropriate one.
Lords Amendment No. 17, which also amends Clause 8, achieves this same effect by introducing a new paragraph which refers to the licensing of a sale.
Lords Amendments Nos. 15 and 16 are consequential amendments as a result of Lords Amendment No. 17. They delete references to "sale" from Clause 8 (1)(a) and (b) which refer only to licences to cover the offences of killing, taking and possession in one's home.
Lords Amendment No. 19 also amends Clause 8. This makes a consequential amendment to the designation of licensing authorities.
I am sure that no hon. Member will object to these sensible if rather technical amendments. I hope that the House will accept them.

Question put and agreed.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

Lords Amendment: No. 20, in page 3, line 42, leave out "or body".

12.45 p.m.

Mr. Hardy: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This is not a very important amendment. It merely removes the words "or body" from Clause 8(4). The term "body" is not used elsewhere in the Bill, and its presence seems to be rather superfluous. I see no reason why this amendment should not be accepted. Their Lordships were wise to propose it.

Question put and agreed to.

Lords Amendment: No. 21, in page 4, line 5, leave out "imposed on the grant of a licence" and insert:
specified in a licence granted".

Mr. Hardy: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
It may be that this improves the language of the Bill, which is a matter which was considered in the House at an earlier stage. It is not a very important amendment but it brings the drafting of the Bill into line with that which is used earlier in the same clause. I hope that the House will approve of the change of language.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 10

ENFORCEMENT

Lords Amendment: No. 22, in page 4, line 18, leave out from "search" to "of" in line 19 and insert:
that person if, with reasonable cause, he suspects him".

Mr. Hardy: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This amendment would remove a possible ambiguity in the clause. As drafted, it is not clear whether "any person" referred to in lines 18 and 19 is necessarily the same person as "any person" in line 16. The amendment makes it clear that a constable's powers of search are contingent upon his having reasonable cause to suspect a person not only of committing or of having committed an offence but also of having evidence on his person of the commission of an offence.
Throughout our consideration of the Bill we have tried to make it clear that we in no way seek to trespass against the individual's liberties and freedom. We feel that we have struck a happy balance between the freedom and rights of the individual and the need to conserve our heritage.
The ambiguity which would exist without the amendment might bear heavily upon the liberty of the individual. I feel therefore that this amendment can be accepted. It will not greatly impede the purposes of the Bill. It will ensure that

the law will be upheld and that respect for the law will not be diminished.

Question put and agreed to.

Lords Amendment: No. 23, in page 4, line 29, leave out "that person's possession" and insert:
the possession of that person".

Mr. Hardy: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This alteration represents an improvement, I suggest. When I was a schoolmaster most of the young people whom I taught had very little understanding of the use of the apostrophe. Since I left teaching, it may be that there has been a marked improvement. But it seems to me that this amendment will make the use of an apostrophe unnecessary, with the result that people reading the Bill will not be perturbed or disadvantaged by the fact that an apostrophe appears in it.
The amendment is not designed to save the face of the nation, which seems to have lost the art of the use of the apostrophe. It is included to improve the drafting and to bring the phrase into line with the same phrase used in Clause 11, on line 11 of page 5.

Question put and agreed to.

Lords Amendment: No. 24, in page 4, line 35, after "and" insert "which".

Mr. Hardy: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This amendment will bring the drafting of the Bill into line with the language used earlier in the clause. It is not an earth-shattering amendment, because we are merely inserting "which" after "and". I believe the House will agree that this greatly improves the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 11

PENALTIES

Lords Amendment: No. 25, in page 5, line 9, after "anything" insert "which is"

Mr. Hardy: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: It will be convenient to take with this Lords Amendment No. 26, in page 5, line 10, at end insert "and which is".

Mr. Hardy: Your suggestion, Mr. Deputy Speaker, is a very acceptable one.
Lords Amendment No. 25 is a minor drafting amendment but it improves the Bill, and it has been the intention of those concerned with the Bill to ensure that it is in the most perfect condition when it leaves the Houses of Parliament. The work of their Lordships in bringing about this drafting amendment and other amendments of similar character seems to me to be most commendable.
Amendment No. 26 makes it very clear that the phrase
found in the possession of that person
relates to anything capable of being used for the taking or killing of protected wild creatures as listed in Schedule 1 to the Bill and not to the creatures themselves. The words relate to the action of a person who may be committing an offence, and not to the creatures.
This amendment is rather more important than Lords Amendment No. 25, because this is related to an important provision in the Bill which empowers the courts to order the forfeiture of any wild creature referred to earlier in Clause 11(2). That power and, consequently, the two amendments we are now considering are very important. Hon. Members will appreciate that they are valuable and deserve to be included within the Bill.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Before I put the Question on the amendment, may I tell the House that using this old English doth upset me and therefore, with the permission of the House, I shall say "The Question is. That this House agrees with the Lords in the said Amendment."

Mr. Mather: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Did the hon. Member wish to object?

Mr. Mather: I believe that it is a time-honoured custom to use these words, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I hope you will not object if on occasion I stray into the old English and find myself using it as an alternative.

Mr. Hardy: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was addressing you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on a point of order, but I should like to refer to this point because the suggestion you have made is very interesting. While it causes our tongues to be twisted on occasion, I find myself in agreement with the hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Mather) in that—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I need not trouble the hon. Gentleman any more. I find that I doth agree as well.

Mr. Denis Howell: I rise only to say, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I think all hon. Members doth protest too much. I was tending to agree with your modernistic approach to these matters which is perfectly in keeping with the need to change with the times. I hope you are not intimidated or pressurised in seeking to bring about these necessary changes. I doth agree with you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that we should proceed in this way.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I had better not try this change when there are only a few hon. Members in the House. I shall consider this later, as I am quite sure—I do not know how to put it in old English—that Mr. Speaker will as well.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendents agreed to.

Clause 14

ORDERS

Lords Amendments: No. 28 in page 5, line 44, leave out "section 7 of".

Mr. Hardy: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
I am delighted to use the word "doth" since it seems to me to be very similar to the style of English used in the Authorised Version, which had a large influence in my formative years and which I suspect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, had a similar influence in your formative years.
The deletion of the three words from subsection (2) brings the drafting into line with that used in subsections (1) and (3). I believe the House will agree that their


Lordships were wise to make this amendment, and I am delighted to recommend it to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendent agreed to.

Clause 17

SHORT TITLE AND EXTENT

Lords Amendment: No. 30, page 7, line 34, after "the" insert "Conservation of"

Mr. Hardy: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: It will be convenient to take at the same time Lords Amendment No. 31, page 7, line 35, leave out "Protection".

Mr. Hardy: I entirely agree, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Both amendments make what appear to be minor changes in the Bill in the sense of achieving the change of Title of which many of us strongly approved. When we first began to put together the two separate Bills which were before their Lordships, it was decided, probably in the rather hurried days which followed my good fortune, if that is the right term, of drawing first place in the Private Members' Ballot, of putting these Bills together, it seemed that the word "protection" would be better than "conservation". Almost as soon as that was done, however, all those associated with the Bill began to regret the choice, feeling that we would have been wiser to have used "conservation" rather than "protection". Conservation is the major purpose of the Bill and perhaps it would be better to leave protection to other kinds of consideration and possibly to other attitudes towards the animal and vegetable kindgdom.
1.0 p.m.
The Bill seeks to make sure that the species survive and that an adequate range of variety is maintained within our natural heritage. That means that "conservation" is the watchword of the Bill. There are other enactments which use "protection" when "conservation" might be a better definition, but in more recent years—I think of the Conservation of Seals Act 1970—"conservation" has been properly used.
Lord Cranbrook acted as sponsor of the Bill in the other place, and I am extremely grateful to him for his insistence and determination which led to the change in Title being regarded as possible, just as I am grateful to all who have been involved in the consideration of the Bill for seizing the point and allowing the amendment to be made.
The Bill received a great deal of publicity as the Wild Creatures and Wild Plants Protection Bill. I have no complaint about that, but I hope that all concerned in local government and education, and especially those who are interested and active in nature conservation, will have noted the change. In that respect the change is significant, although it does not mean that any of the provisions in or intentions of the Bill have been sacrificed.
The major purpose of Lords Amendment No. 31 is to ensure that the Title of the Bill is changed and that all the alterations required in the Bill to permit that change are carried through. I hope the House will accept that this is a valuable step and that we might as well make sure that we use the most appropriate title.

Mr. Mather: I do not know whether this would be an appropriate moment to say to the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Hardy) that he has done a very good job on this Bill. I have been with him through all its stages. I have conservation, or protection—whatever one calls it—very much at heart, and the hon. Gentleman has been extremely skilful in bringing together into the Bill all the creatures and plants that need to be protected. The Bill is the successor to a series of Bills which have dealt with wild birds, badgers and other creatures, and it is probably the last Bill which will be needed. It is the end of a series.
The great advantage of the Bill is that it gives the Secretary of State power to add to or subtract from the list of creatures which are protected. I think I am in order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in speaking of the Bill in general terms as the words "conservation and protection" encompass the whole Bill. The Bill can he said to be very flexible and, therefore, it should provide the powers which are necessary for the Secretary of State to add to or subtract from the list of


creatures and plants protected. We are indebted to the other place for the amendment which we have already discussed, which gives this added flexibility, as indeed we are indebted to the other place for the major amendment which deals with the buying, selling and providing of dead creatures in skeleton or skin form.
When the Bill becomes law I hope that publicity will be given to it and that the date will be made known to members of the public. I hope, too, that there will be freely available pictures or diagrams of the creatures and plants which are to be protected. I have seen a good coloured posted produced by the Nature Conservancy Council, but it does not include all the creatures and plants which are specified in the Bill. One of the orchids is omitted. Now that the Ghost Orchid is to be added, we shall need to have a poster which clearly demonstrates all the plants and creatures which we are seeking to protect.
That the flexibility that the Bill provides is necessary is demonstrated by the fact that within a period of two months some creatures have already been withdrawn from the list and others have been added. The flexibility will make it possible for the Secretary of State to make changes when the need arises.
I have been involved in a great deal of legislation dealing with wild creatures, natural history and so on. My introduction to the subject was when we passed the Wild Creatures and Forest Law Act 1971. That Act deals with animals which previously came under forest law. We had a series of interesting debates on the Bill in 1971. I do not know whether guard dogs—which we are to consider later—come within the same category. A measure of protection is involved, but it is protection for people rather than dogs.
Most of my hon. Friends who serve on the Committee which is considering the Hare Coursing Bill are concerned with conservation. That may seem strange to some hon. Members, but we believe that if hare coursing is abolished there will be a rapid decline in the hare population. Hares are tolerated at present in some areas because coursing and coursing clubs exist in areas where the hare population is quite high. I think you will agree, Mr.

Deputy Speaker, that I am just in order on this point, as we are talking about protection and conservation as a whole.
We are concerned that if the Hare Coursing Bill becomes law it will result in a rapid decline in the hare population because farmers will not be prepared to allow an excessive number of hares on their farming areas and the animals will almost certainly be shot.
It is interesting to recall the last occasion when legislation of this type came before the House. In 1880 the Ground Game Act became law, and that gave a right to tenant farmers to take ground game—rabbits and hares—on land which they rented. Previously, those animals had been reserved for the landowner. This legislation came about because of a very bad harvest in 1879. The Ground Game Bill was introduced so that farmers could have protection against the depredations of rabbits and hares, and the Act became known as the "Rabbits and Hares Act". It was the subject of the General Election of 1880, when Mr. Gladstone swept the country. I am sorry that there are no Liberals present today. The Liberals might have been interested in this subject and wished to intervene. It is an interesting story, and it is apposite to the Bill we are discussing.
As a result of the ground game legislation, farmers had the right to shoot rabbits and hares on their land. That led to a rapid decrease in the hare population. Twelve years later, the Hare Preservation Act 1892 was introduced. That was the first animal protection Act.

Mr. Hardy: I am grateful for the complimentary remarks which the hon. Gentleman made at the beginning of his speech.
The point made by the hon. Gentleman is important. He emphasised how seriously the House of Commons and the other place take the question of conserving our national heritage. The measure to which the hon Gentleman referred, although significant at the time of its introduction, covered little ground. It provided that hares might be shot but should not be displayed for sale during certain periods of the year. We have moved a long way since then.

Mr. Mather: At a time when the proceedings on this Bill draw to a close,


it is appropriate that we should look at this subject in a slightly wider manner. I do not entirely agree with what the hon. Gentleman said. The Ground Game Act 1880 came into effect as a result of the bad harvests of the two preceding years. That Act resulted in a massive slaughter of hares. Some years afterwards, it was thought necessary to introduce the Hares Preservation Act. That Act bears a title similar to the legislation proposed by the hon. Gentleman before it went to the other place. After that, further legislation was passed to provide a close season for these animals. Previously, there had not been a close season.
The Opposition are worried that if the Hare Coursing Bill becomes law, it will result in the rapid decline of the hare population. It may subsequently be found necessary to introduce hare conservation legislation. We may find that a new schedule must be added to the Bill to protect the lepus Europaeus and the lepus timidus, the blue Scottish hare. The lepus Europaeus is the brown hare. Before passing such legislation, we must consider the effects it will have.
If you think that I am in order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I should like to say more about these matters. I should like to go into the natural history of the hare, as we may have to introduce legislation to protect it sooner than we expect. Perhaps we can devote a few minutes to this matter so that we can be prepared for the legislation when the time comes.

Mr. Denis Howell: Which hare is the hon. Member chasing next?

1.15 p.m.

Mr. Mather: I have become so involved in the question of the preservation of the hare that it may be appropriate for me to say one or two words about it.
This fascinating creature does not make burrows. It has its home above ground in forms, which are fairly shallow excavations in the ground. In winter the forms are found to be about 6 ins. deep, while in summer they are about 1½ ins. deep, for obvious reasons. The leverets are born fully furred and with their eyes open. That is not the case with the rabbit. The rabbit is born with its eyes closed. It is a pink animal without fur. The young leveret is able to run from the moment it is dropped by the doe. The does place their young, which have to

live above ground, in widely separated forms.

Mr. Hardy: Hon. Members may find it difficult to relate the subject of the hare to the amendment to the title of the Bill. I thought that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, were on the point of failing to grasp that relationship.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member should never be misled by my movements in the Chair. They are made only for my greater ease and do not indicate that I am about to interrupt.

Mr. Hardy: I apologise for my misunderstanding.
I think that the hon. Gentleman will be making the point that if the hare population diminishes as a result of this Bill—I do not subscribe to that view—at least we should be able to include, if the nature conservancy body thought fit, the European hare and the mountain hare or the blue hare, which are not referred to, but which are much more interesting than the common or garden hare, which I frequently watch. We should be able to include in the Bill both species of either sex living in any area, in which case the Bill would have a valuable effect on the hare population of the British Isles.

Mr. Mather: I mentioned the blue hare, or mountain hare, lepus timidus, lepus Scoticus.
As I was saying, the doe moves the leverets to widely separated areas for their own protection by carrying them in her mouth by the scruff of the neck, as a cat carries a kitten. I thought that the House would be interested in that. However, I am referring to a separate Bill, which arouses strong emotions. We believe that it will bring about more cruelty and that the hare population will be decimated by shooting.
The hon. Member for Rother Valley is right to agree to the word "conservation" as opposed to "protection". Conservation is something with which we on this side of the House are in accord. We call ourselves Conservatives. Inherent in in that word is the ability to grow and prosper. The word also engenders a sense of well-being.
We are aware that we are taking part in the battle to save our environment. We have only to look at continental countries


to see how Nature has been despoiled and the land turned into a near wild life desert. If man cannot learn to live in harmony with Nature man will be impoverished and ultimately doomed.

Mr. Arthur Blenkinsop: I apologise to the House for not being able to be present earlier today, although I did take part in some of the discussions in the earlier stages of this Bill. I should declare an interest in that I am a former member of the Nature Conservancy and am much concerned with the proposal we are discussing.
The proposal to insert the word "conservation" in place of the word "protection" is of importance from a wider point of view. There is a great deal of public misunderstanding about what we are after. There are many people who find it strange that those of us concerned with conservancy and the development of wild life and plants should at the same time talk about the necessity of culls from time to time. We have a particular problem in the North-East with the seal culls. It is thought by many people, undestandably, that those of us who are involved with the whole question of the interaction of our life with wild life should not accept the necessity for such culls. It has been proved scientifically that these are essential for the preservation of the seal.
There has to be an understanding and appreciation of the need to maintain the relationship between one kind of life and another, which is the basic concept of conservation. It is a concept which we must further. It does not mean that we should altogether reject the idea of culling or, indeed, the struggle that goes on naturally between one species and another. There is an inevitable process of natural selection.
There is a difference between the word "protection", which is more generally used, and "conservation", which has quite properly been inserted in another place. It is important to get across to the general public an understanding of the objective of the Bill. Our objective is conservation and the balance between one kind of life and another rather than protection in the narrow sense.

Mr. Denis Howell: I am glad that the hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Mather)

took this opportunity to express himself favourably towards the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Hardy). I find myself astonished by the hon. Gentleman's attempts on this Bill, dealing with the protection of rare animals and plants, to bring in the bestial practice of hare coursing and seek to associate that with the desire of most civilised people to protect rare species.

Mr. Mather: rose—

Mr. Howell: If the hon. Gentleman is getting agitated already I do not know what he will say when I come to my next remarks.

Mr. Mather: The hon. Gentleman may be aware that I was trying to help the House in a difficulty which it was approaching. I had not originally intended to introduce that somewhat extraneous matter. I was trying to make the point that the Hare Coursing Bill was based on ignorance, prejudice and emotion and that the end result might be a drop in the hare population by means which not all of us would accept.

Mr. Howell: I am grateful for those further and better particulars. Since the hon. Gentleman related his views to this Bill, it is right that one or two Labour Members should express strong disagreement with his sentiments.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I was very generous to the hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Mather) and I shall be nearly as generous to the Minister. I hope that we are not about to argue over the Hare Coursing Bill. Having made his riposte and the hare having been sighted, I hope that the Minister will feel that we can get on with the amendments.

Mr. Howell: I shall do my best to be a little more speedy than I would have been a moment or two ago. I was about to say that your movements in the Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker, were perfectly well understood by me because no doubt they were due to the same great unease and sense of indignation which I felt as we listened to the hon. Gentleman unfold his tortuous logic. Most of us would find it extremely difficult to understand how it can be suggested that the abolition of hare coursing in any way endangers that species of animal. It is an extraordinary piece of logic.
The House may be interested in a personal comment. This week I had the good fortune to entertain to dinner in this House an old friend of mine, Mr. Peter Wilson, probably the country's most distinguished sports journalist, and his wife. Mr. Wilson took the opportunity to ask me "What is happening to the Hare Coursing Bill?"
1.30 p.m.
I was rather surprised that he, being a sports journalist, was interested in it. I told him that during the passage of the Bill a Conservative Member raised the question that I, as the Minister for Sport, was not present. I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. Price) for standing up and explaining to the House that the reason I was not present was that I did not believe that hare coursing was a sport and, therefore, had no responsibility or association with it. Mr. Wilson was very interested in this and told me that many years ago he wrote one of his most trenchant articles in the Daily Mirror on the subject.
As Mr. Bate, the sports editor of the Daily Mirror, was also present at the dinner, I urged him to reprint the article. Mr. Wilson told me that he had actually been to a hare coursing meeting before writing his article and he explained the intense feeling of disgust he felt when two dogs got hold of one hare. He said that there was no quick kill or anything of the sort, that it was a most bestial and cruel business, and that he can remember the screams to this day.

Mr. Mather: We have found that when these stories of hares being torn to pieces have been examined and the evidence has been made available they have in almost every case been found to be groundless. If the hon. Gentleman would give me the details of this particular case I will certainly ensure that it is investigated and produce the true facts. However, I have no wish to spoil the Bill of the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Hardy), so perhaps we might slide of this particular subject.

Mr. Howell: I can understand the hon. Gentleman wanting to slide off this subject, although I have not quite reached the bottom of the slide.
I have made it clear that the incident to which I was referring occurred some years ago when Mr. Wilson was just about to enter the illustrious profession of journalism. I cannot believe that it is now possible to train greyhounds to behave differently towards hares than it was in the days which Mr. Wilson was so eloquently describing to me. I certainly cannot believe that there is any relationship, as the hon. Gentleman suggested, between the present practice of those who engage in hare coursing of breeding hares to be chased, killed and preserving hares exclusively for that purpose, and the shooting of hares in the normal course of the control of the hare population.

Mr. Mather: The hon. Gentleman must be sure of his facts. It is absolutely untrue that hares are bred specially for coursing purposes. They are there entirely in the natural state. Hares are bred for coursing purposes in Ireland for enclosed coursing, but this does not happen in this country.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. When the Minister has answered the intervention of the hon. Gentleman, I hope that honour will be satisfied and that we can proceed with the Bill.

Mr. Howell: I hope so too, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I know that this specifically happens in Ireland and that the practice may be different here. Nevertheless, the truth of the matter is that hares have to he captured. They have to be maintained—

Mr. Mather: That is entirely untrue The hon. Gentleman must get his facts right.

Mr. Howell: The hon. Gentleman is getting extremely agitated. It is certainly true, is it not, that the hares have to be available at the moment coursing matches take place? I have never heard of a coursing match without a hare.

Mr. Mather: The hon. Gentleman really must understand what his own Government's Bill does and the facts about this. Hares are not captured. It is stories of this kind that are being put round the country that have got hare coursing its bad name. Hares are on the


ground in their natural state. It is in the Republic of Ireland and some parts of Northern Ireland that they are captured. There they have an entirely different type of coursing called park or enclosed coursing. In this country, according to the National Coursing Club's rules, the hares are entirely in their natural state and are moved on to coursing grounds by the beaters, who move them from the area where they are naturally lying.

Mr. Howell: I regard that as almost the same thing. I cannot understand why the hon. Gentleman is quibbing. Before a hare coursing match can take place, with dogs trying to capture and kill a hare, the hare has to be released. It cannot be released until it is under some degree of control.

Mr. Mather: It is driven.

Mr. Howell: Of course it is driven, but one has to know it is there before one can start driving it. It has to be, in that sense, protected, controlled and gathered up. I do not understand why the hon. Gentleman quibbles with the word "captured". That is exactly what it means. I should have thought that was obvious.
I have made the points I wanted to make. I find it astonishing to say the least that the hon. Gentleman thinks that there is any affinity of interest at all between the opponents of the Hare Coursing Bill and the noble purposes of my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley in relation to the Wild Creatures and Wild Plants Protection Bill.
I am sure that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will be pleased if I now move to my concluding remarks. To tell the truth I shall be also. This is the last chance that I shall have to speak on the Bill because the next two amendments are, I hope, acceptable to all hon. Members.
I should not like the opportunity to pass without paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley and to the officials in the Department of the Environment, who have had the most co-operative association with my hon. Friend in the preparation and passage of the Bill. My hon. Friend has piloted us through the amendments this morning, as he normally does, extremely efficiently and eloquently. I should like to con-

gratulate him on what I am sure he can regard as a most satisfactory period of his parliamentary life. He has achieved something that very few hon. Members have the opportunity of achieving. He has put on the statute book a Bill that will receive wide acclaim and will be of great benefit to this nation for many years to come.
It is also obvious from the number of amendments before us that there has been a lot of activity in another place. On behalf of the Government I am glad to acknowledge the contribution that has been made there by many distinguished Lords who have a great expertise in wild life matters and who have been of considerable help. It has been a great pleasure for us to accept all their many amendments today and to acknowledge the improvement in the Bill as a result. Equally we must appreciate the assistance given by the Nature Conservancy Council, which is the Government's statutory adviser on all these matters. That council has given great support and encouragement to my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley and to the Government to support the Bill.
I turn to publicity. I am told that the sponsors will be stepping up their publicity in the field, which is of extreme importance. I am pleased to tell the House that I am planning a few modest measures to support what the sponsors are doing, and I am picking up and endorsing some of the helpful suggestions made by the hon. Member for Esher.
A departmental circular will be sent to all local authorities, including parish and community councils, and I hope that that will enable them to carry out their responsibilities and help educate the public in this area. The circular will explain the objectives of the Bill and draw attention to the powers of local authorities.
I also agree with what the hon. Member for Esher said about coloured posters. It is extremely important that we attract the attention and imagination of school children. Therefore, I am hoping to send copies of coloured posters depicting the protected creatures and plants to our secondary schools. That is probably the most positive thing we can do as a Government. It will enable teachers to draw the school population's attention to the will of Parliament and to the very scarce


creatures and plants that we have a duty to protect if we are to maintain our national heritage.
I very much hope that the coloured poster campaign meets with the welcome it deserves. If any educationists or nature conservators have any other ideas as to how they think that the Government can help, within the confines of our great difficulties over economic matters and the availability of finance, we shall be very happy to consider such suggestions.
I thank hon. Members for their attention today, which has been very assiduous and welcome. I am happy that it is now possible for the Bill to become law and to give much needed protection to wild plants and our rarer wild creatures before the end of the current holiday season. The Government are grateful, as I am sure will be the public at large, for the co-operative endeavours of the House, which far too often go unnoticed but in this case are to be very much welcomed.

Question put and agreed to.

Schedule 1

WILD CREATURES PROTECTED BY THIS ACT

Lords Amendment: No. 32, in page 8, leave out line 7.

Mr. Hardy: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
We have had quite a few long innings today. The House will not wish to spend very much longer on this Bill. However, I should like to say how grateful I am for the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) and the hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Mather). The hon. Member for Esher has played a very active part in the consideration of the Bill and has made some very valuable contributions, which I hope the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) will appreciate.
I should like to say how grateful I am to the Minister, who has helped and guided the Bill, with his colleagues in the Department of the Environment, to what I hope will be its successful conclusion in a few minutes' time. I echo the remarks of appreciation to the officials in the Department who have been extremely

co-operative throughout the consideration of the Bill.
As we are in a sense summing up, I want to express one or two brief comments on behalf of the voluntary wild life bodies which are sponsoring the Bill —the Botanical Society of the British Isles, the Council for Nature and the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves. They would like to express their appreciation to all who have helped with the progress of the Bill in both Houses and those whose help and guidance over the last two years had contributed to the Bill's passage. The voluntary bodies have been particularly appreciative of the co-operation of Government Departments and officials of Parliament.
The amendment deals, unfortunately, with the deletion of the dormouse from Schedule 1. The dormouse is still in decline, but its position is much better at present than we had assumed a couple of years ago. This is probably due to the fact that the last two winters have been particularly mild. Dormouse mortality in hard winters is very severe indeed. At present it is not so rare as to merit inclusion in Schedule 1, although we can assume that the Nature Conservancy Council will be looking at this question very carefully, and if the status of the dormouse deteriorated obviously it would be included.
I have a recent ground for anxiety, however. A book which has been published recently in this country and which is a translation from the French advises people how to destroy and stuff wild animals, which would include the dormouse. As it is a translation from the French, it presents the situation in terms of French law. Our laws are perhaps better in this respect than those to which the book relates, and one hopes that our authorities will look carefully to see whether this particular volume is in any way an incitement to people to break the provisions of the Bill.
I hope that the Bill when enacted will be regarded, as it deserves to be, as an example to the rest of the world. Once again Britain is in a very leading position in the field of example in conservation. It is—if I may make one relatively prejudiced comment—the conservation of wild life and our natural heritage, and


not the conservation of privilege and property, which is another association of that word.
The Mammal Society has started a survey of the dormouse. This will help to establish its status, and the Nature Conservancy Council will give guidance should further considerations arise in relation to the species.

Question put and agreed to.

Remaining Lords amendments agreed to.

MOBILE HOMES BILL

Lords Amendments considered.

Clause 1

DUTY TO OFFER AGREEMENTS

Lords Amendment: No. 1, in page 2, line 7, leave out from "person" to "as" in line 8 and insert
is permitted to station a mobile home on a protected site and occupies it".

1.45 p.m.

Mr. Tom King: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
Before I begin discussing the amendments and the Bill, I should like to express my appreciation. The Minister of State, Department of the Environment, spoke on the preceding Bill about all-party co-operation. I am very grateful for the co-operation which has been shown to enable these Bills to proceed in an orderly fashion. I very much appreciate the co-operation of all concerned.
I should like to say, by way of introduction to the series of amendments made by their Lordships, that while a number of them are technical and may not need considerable discussion, they are nevertheless very worth while and they reflect great credit on their Lordships. I pay a particular tribute to my noble Friend Lord Elton for the amount of work he did in sponsoring the Bill for me in another place. I pay tribute to the help given by the Minister and his officials, and Lord Melchett, who dealt with the Bill in another place. I appreciate the work that has been done.
This amendment relates to an important change. The wording of the Bill had

got out of balance between Clause 1 and Clause 2. There was never an intention —because it was impossible to extend the range of the Bill—that it should apply to people who rent caravans as well as to people who own them. The Bill is limited in intention. It is intended to cover those who own a caravan but who rent the site.
Lords Amendment No. 1 ensures that the intention of the Bill remains intact. There would otherwise have been a danger that Clause 2 would have been in disagreement with Clause 1. The amendment clarifies the position.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): I hope that the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) will not think me discourteous if I preface the discussion on the amendments with some brief remarks. Among the responsibilities which I have recently assumed in coming to the Department of the Environment is mobile homes. The return of the Bill from another place has meant for me a very rapid initiation into the subject. While I can hardly claim extensive expertise, my enforced and concentrated study over the past few days has been useful in two particular respects.
First, I can understand why my predecessor, now the Under-Secretary of State for Industry, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman), was able to welcome this measure on behalf of the Government. In the interval since he and the hon. Gentleman last spoke on the Bill, a number of amendments have been effected in another place. I hardly think it is anticipating our discussions too much to say that with one exception those amendments do not alter the substance of the Bill as it left this House. The bulk and the length of the amendments conceal, from a first glance, a considerable amount of reordering, trimming, polishing and clarification, but the essential parts of the Bill are altered only in form.
Secondly, my introduction will certainly stand me in good stead in continuing with the review into mobile homes instituted by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State last December and headed, until last month, by my hon. Friend the Member for Ardwick. My hon. Friend has already explained to the House that work on this review was necessarily interrupted because of the success


of the hon. Member for Bridgwater in the Ballot, but he was looking forward, before his translation to the Department of Industry, to resuming this work.
I shall follow up those intentions. In particular, I hope before too long to meet the organisations which have supplied statements and have, as it happens, inadvertently provided me with some excellent briefing on problems relating to mobile homes.
It is unfortunate that my hon. Friend the Member for Ardwick, with his enviable grasp of the issues involved, cannot assist in what I hope will prove the concluding stages of this Bill. But I am sure that the hon. Member for Bridgwater will deploy the same skills of lucid explanation and persuasion as he has exercised during the previous stages of the Bill in this House.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 2

TERM OF AGREEMENTS ETC

Lords Amendment: No. 2, in page 3, line 7, leave out subsection (2) and insert:
(2) Where—

(a) an owner of a protected site who is deemed to have complied with this section by virtue of paragraph (a) of the proviso to subsection (1) above subsequently acquires a new or extended estate or interest in the land comprising the site; or
(b) an owner of a protected site is deemed to have complied with this section by virtue of paragraph (b) of the proviso to subsection (1) above and planning permission is subsequenly granted for the use of the land comprising the site as a site for mobile homes either without limitation or for a specified period,
the owner shall offer to extend the term of any agreement entered into in pursuance of a duty imposed on him by section 1 of this Act for a period which expires on whichever of the following dates first occurs:—

(i) a date which is five years from the date on which the agreement commenced;
(ii) the date when his estate or interest in the land ceases; or
(iii) the date on which planning permission expires."

Mr. Tom King: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This is a technical correction or improvement to the Bill. There was

always the problem in this area of granting an agreement for five years and the query whether the owner had title or the the ability to make such a grant. The ownership or licence for a site can be affected by planning permission. If the permission is not for five years, there is a problem. This amendment clarifies the position. If somebody who is entitled to offer a shorter term commensurate with a planning agreement or licence has the period extended, it is right that the person who has received a shorter agreement, by virtue of the fact that the owner was not then in a position to give him his full entitlement, should be entitled subsequently to receive the full period if the owner is in a position to give it. I fully support the amendment.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 3

PARTICULARS TO BE CONTAINED IN AGREEMENT

Lords Amendment: No. 3, in page 3, line 44, after "occupier" insert "to require the owner".

Mr. Tom King: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This is a valid point. As originally drafted, the Bill referred to the right of the occupier to extend the term. The occupier does not grant the agreement. Therefore, we need to insert the words "to require the owner" to extend the agreement. That is an obvious and necessary correction.

Question put and agreed to.

Lords Amendment: No. 4, in page 4, line 9, leave out "subsection (2) of section 2" and insert "section 2(2)".

Mr. Tom King: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This is entirely a technical correction.

Question put and agreed to.

Lords Amendment: No. 5, in page 4, line 15, leave out paragraph (d) and insert:
(d) the annual charge to be made, the intervals at which payment is to be made and provision for reviews of that charge at intervals of twelve months subject to the right of an occupier who has determined the agreement to be repaid by


the owner such proportion (if any) of any payment made by him as is attributable to a period after he has ceased to occupy part of the site, any such repayment being apportioned from day to day;".

Mr. Tom King: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): With this it will be convenient to take Lords Amendment No. 6, in page 4, line 28, leave out paragraph (e).

Mr. King: This is the one change of real substance which has been made by their Lordships since the Bill departed from this House.
The House will be aware that this matter was the subject of keen debate on Report. I moved similar amendments on that occasion. There was disagreement and misunderstanding by hon. Members about the exact impact of the amendments. There have been further discussions with outside bodies—particularly with the Mobile Home Residents Association—to decide what basis might be most acceptable to all parties concerned. The National Caravan Council and the National Federation of Site Operators have made their views known as well.
I believe that this amendment will provide the best basis on which to proceed. The first basis is that the charge is now a single charge. We have avoided the problem of splitting the site charge and the service charge.
The second matter of substance concerns the review period—whether it should be annually, two-yearly or three-yearly. The more I have considered, the more I have been persuaded that it is in the interests of all concerned that the review should be annually. Although there is a fear on the part of tenants that there will be more frequent increases, against that there is the valid point that a site owner who has to decide in the next couple of months what he considers the right rent to fix for two years ahead might, in the present inflationary situation, wish to cover himself for a substan-

tial amount in view of possible increases in electricity and water charges, rates, labour costs and other possible eventualities.
There has probably never been a more difficult time for people accurately to budget their costs forward. The tendency would be for perfectly responsible, reasonable site owners to over-cover themselves to the disadvantage of tenants. Therefore, I believe than an annual review is the right way to proceed. After discussion, I think that is now the general view in the House. I think that this is the right way and the best basis on which to initiate the mobile Homes Act, as I hope it will be.
The Minister mentioned the review which he will be carrying on. No doubt this is a matter to which the review will pay attention.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendment agreed to.

Lords Amendment: No. 7, in page 4, line 41, leave out paragraph (h) and insert:
(h) the right of the owner to determine the agreement for breach of an undertaking, subject to the requirement, in the case of a breach which is capable of being remedied, that he has served written notice of the breach upon the occupier and has given the occupier a reasonable opportunity of remedying it;

Mr. Tom King: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This is a simple piece of good English, although that may be a dangerously brave remark to make. It requires that anybody who is determining an agreement for breach of an undertaking should give an opportunity for the person concerned to remedy the breach, but it allows for the fact that that opportunity will not occur for the kind of breach which is incapable of being remedied. I think that is a sensible note to include.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 4

DISPUTES

Lords Amendment: No. 8, in page 5, line 38, leave out Clause 4 and insert the following new Clause:

"4.—(1) if the owner of a protected site on which a mobile home is, or is to be, stationed—

(a) fails without reasonable excuse to comply with the provisions of section 1 of this Act; or
(b) having in compliance with the said provisions offered to the occupier an agreement on terms and conditions which have been accepted by the occupier, fails without reasonable excuse to enter into a written agreement with the occupier to give effect to the terms and conditions so agreed within the period of one month following the date of such acceptance,
the occupier may apply to the court for the grant of an agreement which complies with section 3 of this Act or which contains the terms and conditions so agreed, as the case may be.

(2) On an application under subsection (() above the court shall make an order for the grant of an agreement which—

(a) in a case falling within paragraph (a) of that subsection, complies with section 3 of this Act and contains such terms and conditions as the court thinks reasonable; or
(b) in a case falling within paragraph (b) of that subsection—

(i) where the court is satisfied that terms and conditions have been agreed between the parties, contains the terms and conditions so agreed; or
(ii) where the court is not so satisfied, complies with section 3 of this Act and contains such terms and conditions as the court thinks reasonable.

(3) If an occupier to whom an agreement has been offered by an owner of a protected site in pursuance of a duty under section 1 of this Act fails without reasonable excuse to signify within the period of three months following the date on which the agreement is so offered whether or not the terms and conditions contained in it are acceptable to him, the owner of the protected site may apply to the court for the grant of an agreement which complies with section 3 of this Act.

(4) On an application under subsection (3) above the court shall make an order for the grant of an agreement which complies with section 3 of this Act and contains such terms and conditions as the court thinks reasonable.

(5) An occupier who is dissatisfied with any of the terms or conditions in an agreement offered to him by an owner in pursuance of a duty imposed under section 1 of this Act may, within the period of three months following the date on which the agreement is so offered, apply to the court for the determination of the matter in dispute.

(6) Where an agreement has been entered into in pursuance of section 1 of this Act or has been granted by virtue of an order of the court under this section either party may apply to the court for the determination of any matter in dispute arising under the terms of the agreement.

(7) On an application under subsection (5) or subsection (6) above the court shall determine the matter in dispute and shall make such order as is necessary to give effect to its determination.

(8) Where on an application made under this subsection by the owner of a protected site the court is satisfied that an occupier does not occupy as his only or main residence a mobile home which is stationed on that site by virtue of an agreement entered into in pursuance of section 1 of this Act or granted by virtue of an order of the court under this section, the court may make an order rescinding the agreement on such terms as to payment by or to either party of damages for the nonperformance of the agreement, or otherwise, as to the court may seem equitable."

Mr. Tom King: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
As the Minister said, some of these amendments look fearsome and fairly substantial. However, when carefully studied, their main effects will be seen to be limited. There is not such a substantial change to Clause 4 as might be inferred from a quick glance.
The key change in this part of the Bill relating to disputes concerns the facility for an occupier, if a court has granted or imposed an agreement, to ask for that agreement to be revoked. This matter caused great concern. It has now been pointed out that, as it is open to the tenant to give 28 days' notice and as it is unlikely that a revocation order will be issued by a court in less than that time, there is no point in having a revocation order procedure because the tenant has freedom to give notice.
This is a sensible improvement which alleviates the concern of site owners.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 5

AGREEMENTS TO BIND SUCCESSIVE OWNERS

Lords Amendment: No. 9, in page 7, line 25, leave out from "shall" to "be" in line 27.

2.0 p.m.

Mr. Tom King: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This is a technical amendment which follows on from the point about there being no revocation order procedure.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendment agreed to.

Clause 7

POWER TO PRESCRIBE MINIMUM STANDARDS

Lords Amendment: No. 11, in page 8, line 30, leave out subsection (2) and insert:
(2)An order made under subsection (1) above may apply generally or to a particular area or to protected sites in a particular category and may prescribe different minimum standards in relation to protected sites in different categories.

Mr. Tom King: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this amendment we can discuss Lords Amendment No. 12, in page 8, line 32, leave out section (3) and insert:
(3)The power of the Secretary of state to make orders under this section shall be exercisable by statutory instrument.
(4)An order under subsection (1) above shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of parliament.
(5)Any power of the Secretary of state to make an order under any provision of this section shall include a power to make an order varying or revoking any order previously made under that provision.

Mr. King: This amendment deals with a point which is of more direct concern to the Minister, namely, the order-making power. The problem is how to achieve flexibility in the different areas and to deal with a situation in which there are many standards and conditions for sites. This is applicable particularly in the distinction between what is acceptable as a retirement home of good standard for elderly people and what under the legislation might come within the definition of an approved gipsy site.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendment agreed to.

Clause 8

EXTENSION OF ACT OF 1968 TO SCOTLAND

Lords Amendment: No. 13, in page 8, line 36, leave out Clause 8 and insert the following new Clause A—

Extension of Act of 1968 to Scotland.

"8. Part I (relating to the protection of residential occupiers) and Part III (miscellaneous) of the Act of 1968 shall apply to Scotland subject to the modifications contained in the Schedule to this Act."

Mr. Tom King: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this amendment we will take the following Lords Amendments:

No. 16, in page 10, line 29, leave out from "Scotland" to "any" in line 31.

No. 17, after Clause 10, in page 10, line 43, at end insert the following schedule:

SCHEDULE

MODIFICATIONS OF THE ACT OF 1968 FOR THE PURPOSE OF EXTENDING THAT ACT TO SCOTLAND

PART I

GENERAL ADAPTATION

1. For section 17(3) of the Act of 1968 (extent) there shall be substituted the following subsection—
(3) Part I and sections 13, 14(1), 16, subsection (1) above and this subsection shall extend to Scotland as read with section 8 of and the Schedule to the Mobile Homes Act 1975, but otherwise this Act does not extend to Scotland or Northern Ireland.".

Mr. King: We now move into the world of Scottish law, which may be strange to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Although I am Scottish by birth, it is a total mystery to me. We are anxious that the Bill, and particularly the relevant parts of the 1968 Act, should apply to Scotland.
The amendment deals with a matter of great interest to my hon. Friends, and particularly to my right hon. Friend the Member for Renfrewshire, East (Miss Harvie Anderson). I thought that we had got the matter right on Report, but I should have known that there were bound to be second thoughts. I understand that the Scottish lawyers are satisfied that the amendment will put the Bill into correct shape.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 9

INTERPRETATION

Lords Amendment: No. 14, in page 10, line 17, leave out first "a".

Mr. Tom King: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this Amendment we will take Lords Amendment No. 15, in page 10, line 27, leave out "a."

Mr. King: In moving this amendment I should like to take the opportunity of expressing gratitude to all the people who have worked together so harmoniously to produce what I hope will be a valuable measure for people who live in and own mobile homes and sites. On the preceding Bill the Minister of State, Department of the Environment congratulated the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Hardy) on his luck in the Ballot. I must acknowledge my share of luck in attaining such a high place in the Ballot. I hope the House will feel that the use I have made of it has been worth while and that with the help of hon. Members on both sides of the House we have produced a measure which will be of genuine benefit to people who live in and own mobile homes and sites.
I am very grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Industry who has been concerned with the Bill. I have enjoyed working with him. It is right that I should pay tribute to the work he has done on the Bill and the help he has rendered. I acknowledge in particular the help of his officials and the friendly and constructive way in which they have dealt with the Bill and enabled speed to be gathered at times when it was needed. We have thereby managed to avoid delays between the various stages of the Bill.
I am particularly grateful to my parliamentary agent, Mr. Colin Winser, to whom I have paid tribute before on his sustained record of endurance on the Bill which I hope I can afford but for which I am enormously grateful. I have already paid tribute to Lord Elton for the work he has done on the Bill. It would be wrong to leave out such bodies as the National Caravan Council and its Director General, Mr. Innes, the National

Federation of Site Operators, and Colonel Bennett, and the Mobile Home Residents Association and its General Secretary, Mr. Orpin, for the way in which they have co-operated in promptly attending discussions, sometimes called at short notice.
I do not pretend that the Bill is the perfect answer to the problem. I am aware that there are still many loopholes in it. I therefore welcome the on-going review, because with any Bill there should be a close monitoring of its progress. This Bill is a little unusual in that the monitoring procedure was created before its passage to the statute book. The review will monitor the working of the Bill. I am sure that that is right, because none of us would be so conceited as to say that his Bill was perfect.
Benefits will flow from the Bill, but much will depend on people's attitudes. The operation of it will be watched, and if there are serious abuses under it perhaps more serious measures will have to be taken. I commend the technical amendments to the House.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Before I call the next speaker, I should point out that we must have some semblance of order. I am the most tolerant of men, especially on Fridays, but Third Reading speeches should be limited.

Mr. Armstrong: In supporting the Lords amendment, I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King). In a Parliament in which the legislative programme has been very heavy, it is a great achievement by the hon. Gentleman to bring the Bill to a successful conclusion. In the review of which I am to be in charge, I shall no doubt be greatly helped by the Bill, which, in a sense, is a holding operation in the provision of homes for our people. I am therefore delighted to be associated with the Bill.

Mr. Carol Mather: I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) on his Bill. I did not know very much about it before this morning, but I have listened with great interest to the discussions. I am pleased to have played a small, but important, part in the progress of the Bill through the House.

Mr. Michael Ward: I know that my hon. Friend the Member


for Renfrewshire, West (Mr. Buchan) would wish me to thank the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) for his kind remarks, which those of us who have served on the Standing Committee would share. My hon. Friend the Member for Renfrewshire, West made a most useful contribution in introducing the provisions that extended the legislation to Scotland.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Bridgwater. He has undoubtedly done a great deal for a rather under-privileged section of the community who seem to be held in low esteem because of the feeling, even among local authority officials, that their homes are substandard and that there is something rather peculiar about people who wish to live in mobile homes. I think the spirit of accord and partnership both on the Committee and with the interests outside has firmly established that this is not the case. Many people expect to live in mobile homes for 20 or 30 years, and the homes are now being built with this sort of life in view.
The Bill will do a great deal for the community and will be much appreciated in my constituency and elsewhere. Unfortunately, I was unable to be present for the discussion of certain parts of the Bill recently. There are still points of disagreement between hon. Members and between site owners and tenants, for instance over charges and reviews, but they are minor differences and this is a very worthwhile Bill.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: This should not be taken as a precedent.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

GUARD DOGS BILL

Lords amendments considered.

Clause 1

CONTROL OF GUARD DOGS

Lords amendment: No. 1, in page 1, line 9, leave out "or (b)" and insert "except while it".

2.13 p.m.

Mr. Peter Doig: I beg to move, That the House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
I would like to express my thanks to Lord Gordon-Walker and Earl Cowley for the way they handled this Bill in another place. I was invited to attend a meeting between the supporters of the Bill and objectors, and we worked out amendments which satisfied the objections as far as possible without destroying the intentions of the Bill. This is a very sensible way to deal with the matter, and it expedited the Bill's progress in another place. Considering their background and the way in which they were arrived at, it is not surprising that I agree with all 13 of the Lords amendments.
Lords Amendment No. 1 makes clear that the primary object of Clause 1 is that owners must ensure that dogs are under the control of the handler at all times while being used as guard dogs. There will be occasions when the handler will not be able to have the dog udder control—for example, when he is cooking a meal. The amendment makes clear that securing the dog on these occasions is the exception to the general rule.

Question put and agreed to.

Lords amendment: No. 2, in page 1, line 10, leave out "chained up or otherwise".

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): With this, we can discuss Lords Amendment No. 3, in page 1, line 16, leave out "chained up or otherwise".

Mr. Doig: I beg to move, That the House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
It was thought inappropriate to prescribe in the Bill how a dog should be secured. With the amendment, the clause will require that a dog should be secured


so that it is not at liberty to go freely about the premises, but leaves it to the handler to decide the best way of securing the dog. He might feel it should be securely kennelled. Whatever he does to secure a dog, if it is at liberty to go freely about the premises the handler will be contravening the clause. The amendment removes the part of the clause which specified that a dog had to be chained up.

Mr. Carol Mather: Although I missed one of the important stages of this Bill, I was here when it started its passage through Parliament. It is now a very different and better Bill. I support the amendment because there was the danger of ill treatment of dogs and the fact that they had to be chained up.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendment agreed to.

Clause 3

GUARD DOG KENNEL LICENCES

Lords Amendment: No. 4, in page 2, line 22, leave out first "or".

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we can also take Lords Amendment No. 5, in page 2, line 22, leave out second "or" and No. 6, in page 2, line 23, after "1912" insert:
the Pet Animals Act 1951, the Animal Boarding Establishments Act 1963 or the Breeding of Dogs Act 1973".

Mr. Doig: I beg to move, That the House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
The first two amendments are drafting amendments. The purpose of Lords Amendment No. 6 is to continue the practice that has grown up in recent years of making provision in Acts regulating the protection and keeping of animals for courts to cancel licences held by a person under the Act if he has been convicted of an offence under the Act or under certain other Acts.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

New Clause A

APPEALS

Lords Amendment: No. 7, in page 2, after Clause 3, insert new Clause A—

"—(1) The applicant or, as the case may be, the licence holder may appeal to a magistrates' court or, in Scotland, a sheriff court, against—

(a) the refusal of a local authority to grant a licence; or
(b) the conditions (other than the prescribed conditions) to which the licence is subject; or
(c) the authority's refusal to vary the conditions; or
(d) the revocation of a licence.

(2) On an appeal the court may, if it thinks fit, give directions to the local authority with respect to the licence or the conditions, and it shall be the duty of the local authority to comply with such directions."

Mr. Doig: I beg to move, That the House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This amendment provides the right in the Bill for appeals instead of leaving it in regulations. It does not make a great deal of difference and just means that, instead of a Minister making regulations conferring a right of appeal, they will be made in the Bill.
I think we could take with this Lords Amendment No. 9, in page 2, line 36, leave out paragraph (b).

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendment agreed to.

Clause 4

OFFENCES AND PENALTIES

Lords Amendment: No. 8, in page 2, line 31, at end insert—

"(2) The provisions of this Act shall not be construed as—

(a) conferring a right of action in any civil proceedings (other than proceedings for the recovery of a fine or any prescribed fee) in respect of any contravention of this Act or of any of the terms or conditions of a licence granted under section 3 of this Act; or
(b) derogating from any right of action or other remedy (whether civil or criminal) in proceedings instituted otherwise than by virtue of this Act."

Mr. Doig: I beg to move, That the House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
The main purpose of the amendment is to make clear that nothing in the Bill confers a right of action for breach of the requirements of Clause 1. Nor is there to be a remedy for breach of any of the other provisions of the Bill, of the regulation or of the terms or conditions of licences.
Without the amendment, the Bill would almost certainly not confer a right of action in any case. The courts normally grant a remedy for breach of statutory duty only if an Act is specifically designed to protect a defined class of people. This Bill is designed to protect the public at large. However, it is desirable that the wishes of Parliament should be made abundantly clear, and it is the modern custom to declare expressly whether breach of duties imposed by a Bill is actionable in itself.
This is, therefore, a technical amendment similar to one made in Committee on the Safety of Sports Grounds Bill. It would be wrong for this Bill to confer a right of action. The law relating to liability for damage for injury caused to animals was thoroughly reviewed only recently by the Law Commission, as a result of whose report the Animals Act 1971 was passed. That contains a code for liability for damage caused by animals, and it would not be right to interfere piecemeal with that code in the Bill.
Section 5(3)(b) of the Animals Act expressly deals with trespassers who are injured by animals guarding premises. The effect of the amendment, therefore, is that a person injured by a guard dog is granted no additional civil remedy by the Bill but may have remedies under the Animals Act or at common law.
For these reasons, it is best to preserve the status quo as far as possible, declaring that no right of action is conferred by the Bill, except of course for fines or fees. Existing rights remain unaffected as a result of paragraph (b).

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendment agreed to.

Clause 6

INTERPRETATION

Lords Amendment: No. 10, in page 3, line 17, at end insert:
"agricultural land" has the same meaning as in the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Act 1953;".

Mr. Doig: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: It will be convenient to discuss at the same time Lords Amendment No. 12, in page 3, line 31, after "than" insert "agricultural land and".

Mr. Doig: Doubt was expressed in the Lords whether farm dogs were outside the scope of the Bill as drafted. It was accepted that, as with domestic dogs, farm dogs should be excluded. The purpose of the amendment is therefore to exclude agricultural land from the definition of "premises" to remove any doubt. The definition of agricultural land in the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Act 1933 reads:
'agricultural land' means land used as arable, meadow or grazing land, or for the purpose of poultry farming, pig farming, market gardens, allotments, nursery grounds or orchards".

Question put and agreed to.

Lords Amendment: No. 11, in page 3, line 18, after second "dog" insert "which is being".

Mr. Doig: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This is a drafting amendment to avoid any possible uncertainty. It makes it clear that a guard dog is a dog actually being used to protect premises and so on.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords Amendent agreed to.

Clause 7

SHORT TITLE, COMMENCEMENT AND EXTENT

Lords Amendment: No. 13, in page 3. line 39, leave out "prescribe" and insert "appoint".

Mr. Doig: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This is a drafting amendment. In the context of the clause, "appoint" is a more appropriate word than "prescribe".
As this is the last amendment, perhaps I could take this opportunity to say that I regard the Bill as a very small first step in providing much better regulation of the control of dogs and the protection of people from dogs. I hope that it will be so regarded.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Dr. Shirley Summersckill): Perhaps I might congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) on having successfully piloted the Bill through all its stages. It is a greatly improved Bill compared with the one he originally presented. There has been very good co-operation between him and the Home Office in making these improvements. I shall watch the results of the Bill with great interest. We await the report, expected later this year, of the Department of the Environment working party set up to consider the general problems posed by dogs.

Question put and agreed to.

BATTERED WIVES (RIGHTS TO POSSESSION OF MATRIMONIAL HOME) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

2.26 p.m.

Mr. Jack Ashley: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The purpose of the Bill is to secure action for a section of the community who have suffered seriously from the worst possible kind of violence. It is a significant minority. The figures vary, but I estimate that about 25,000 women at least suffer from habitual serious brutality. Society cannot view that situation with anything but the profoundest concern.
Since I first raised this matter two years ago, there have been some heartening developments. In that time, the magnificent work of Mrs. Erin Pizzey and of Chiswick Women's Aid has been supplemented by a number of other centres. The work of Mrs. Pizzey was pioneering work of the first order. It was she who first identified the problem, who first recognised the seriousness of the situation and who first did something practical by establishing the Chiswick aid centre. As a result of that magnificent pioneering work, the whole nation has now come to appreciate the significance of the problem.
Since Mrs. Pizzey gave hard and practical encouragement to the women who suffer from violence, and since I raised the matter after speaking to her and the battered women involved, 30 sanctuaries have so far been established throughout Britain by local authorities or voluntary associations. That represents an important advance. It is by no means enough, because we need a sanctuary for battered wives in every town and city in the land. That is a vital prerequisite to beginning to solve the problem, but the first development is that a large number of sanctuaries are being developed. The second is that the Government and local government are now interested in this problem. As a result, many measures are now being taken which I hope will bear fruit.
The third development has been the establishment of a Select Committee. I do not propose—nor would it be in order


—to comment on that Committee's work. The fact that it is now sitting and receiving evidence from so many people is a very heartening development indeed.
With my Bill I propose to deal only with one aspect of this intractable problem, because already I have put forward a comprehensive 15-point plan for dealing with the multifarious problems of battered wives. That included action by the police, solicitors, the Law Society, social services, local government housing officers and many Government Departments. I realise that, although it would take time to accomplish action on this large scale, at least the House of Commons and the public are now aware of what is required. What baffles me about this whole problem, about my Bill in particular and all these problems of battered wives in general, is the astounding complacency of the House of Commons and, indeed, of the public.
It really is beyond comprehension that people can be more concerned about beagles than they are about battered wives. I am very found of dogs, and beagles are magnificent animals. They should not be compelled to smoke. I am all in favour of action on the ground. But why do so many millions of people become outraged at a couple of beagles smoking when no one is concerned about the battered wives? What has gone wrong with our values? The whole nation has gone crazy, simply neglecting the problem of battered wives in this way. By all means let us protect beagles, but beagles and other animals come a very bad second to the problems of battered wives.
I believe that people are complacent, frankly, because they do not understand the subject. The subject is not one of normal domestic dispute between man and wife. I argue with my wife or, to put it more correctly, she argues with me, in a normal domestic dispute, and I have no doubt that many Members argue with their wives, or their wives argue with them. But the subject of the Bill is not normal domestic dispute. It is one of brutality, of thuggery and mugging in a house as distinct from on the highway. When a man or a women is the subject of violence on the highway the police, naturally, are concerned. So are the public and, I am glad to say, the

House of Commons. But when women are subject to violence in their own homes, no one wants to know. I think that this is wholly wrong.
I emphasise that I am speaking not of normal domestic disputes but of real brutality—of beating, of burning, of battering, of the breaking of bones and the crushing of spirits. That is the problem to which I want the House to address itself.
Strangely enough, this is the only crime in relation to which the victim suffers in a dual sense. In most cases of crime the victim suffers and then society plays hell. In this case the woman is not only battered. She also in many cases loses the possession of the home, and very often the children lose the possession of the home. The man who commits the crime not only gets off scot-free in many cases but retains the possession of his home.
This is the central issue of my Bill. In many cases, as a result of violence, someone must lose the home. Violence very often results in the loss of the home, and I suggest to the House that the question of who leaves must be decided. My Bill is designed to ensure the reversal of the present situation. The shoe should be placed on the other foot. The woman should retain the possession of the home, and the man who has done the battering should have to seek sanctuary elsewhere. In other words, the attacker should lose possession of the home, and the person attacked should retain possession of it. It is the man, with the greater earning power, who should be forced out of the home, and the woman, who is relatively poor, who should retain possession.
I know that the Bill will he opposed by various hon. Members, and I can understand their points of view. I think they would want me to try to clarify the various points in my Bill. How do I define "violence"? Quite obviously, there is a vast range of violence, and there is a very heavy penalty, because the loss of a home to a man can be a serious loss. I define violence, for the purposes of this Bill, as meaning grievous bodily harm. The courts have a very clear responsibility when grievous bodily harm is found to have been inflicted. I am saying that when a man is guilty of grievous bodily harm he should also simultaneously and automatically, if the wife so applies, lose the possession of his home.
Secondly, what is meant by "possession"? Does it mean ownership or occupation? My interpretation is that it means occupation, so that the man would retain the possession of his home but would be deprived of the occupation of it.
Thirdly, what time factor am I thinking about in the Bill? I do not want this to be for ever, but I want to be realistic and recognise that there must he limits. The limits, which I should be happy to discuss in Committee, would be, first, that after remarriage of the woman the husband would be entitled to apply for a review of the order. That would be the first ground.
The second ground would be when the children are no longer dependent on the mother. That would be the second basis on which the husband could apply for a review of the order.
The third ground would be when cohabitation between the woman and another man has been proved. I am uneasy about the cohabitation principle, because I have long been an opponent of any rules or regulations based on cohabitation. Such rules inevitably have the flavour of snooping. I put this forward in order to try to show the House that I am sincere and am prepared to lean over backwards in trying to win support for the Bill. I am not anxious to penalise any man unduly, but I firmly believe that the limited provisions of the Bill are vitally necessary if justice is to prevail.
I hope that the House will look favourably upon the provisions of this Bill. I believe that it is entirely wrong that a woman who has been the subject of violence should not only have had to suffer in that way but also lose her home, as she does so often now. I believe that we really must reverse the present situation, and ensure that, if anyone has to seek sanctuary, it should be the aggressor, not the victim.

2.40 p.m.

Mr. Ronald Bell: I feel that this is one of those Bills which are put forward on a Friday, for reasons which one understands very well, and one realises the motives which have led the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) to devise the Bill and

to put it forward. However, I think that it is not a Bill which the House should support or to which it should give a Second Reading.
There is a considerable temptation for all hon. Members on these occasions to take evasive action—it seems to have been taken quite effectively today—and to say what is undoubtedly true: that this is virtually the end of the Session, that there is no more Private Members' time and, therefore, that the Bill could be allowed to slide through on Second Reading because it could not go beyond that stage anyway.
I do not think that that would be a satisfactory course, because there is a cumulative process here and it is often said afterwards in later Sessions that a Bill to achieve a certain effect, whatever it might be, was given a Second Reading on several previous occasions but that there was no time allowed it to go forward on to the statute book. This begins to give an aura of respectability to a measure which is not a practicable legislative proposal.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South has put forward a Bill because he is shocked when he comes across individual cases where a wife has been badly treated. He described the Bill as one applying to cases where bones have been broken, where spirits have been crushed, where grievous bodily harm has been done and so on. But, of course, one has to deal with a Bill like this as one sees it. The Bill says:
Where … a man has been convicted of an act of violence …".
That means any act of violence, however slight. It has nothing to do with the breaking of bones, the crushing of spirits or grievous bodily harm. It may be said that that is true but that the hon. Gentleman, in moving the Second Reading, gave a quite different definition—that of major grievous bodily harm—and that it could be changed in Committee. With respect, I do not think that anything quite as fundamentally different as this is apt for the process of change in Committee. What is more, we have reached the point in the Session which means that there will not be a fruitful Committee stage. We have, therefore, to decide whether to give approval in principle to the Bill as we find it.
The hon. Gentleman said that he understood "possession" as occupation rather than ownership. I agree that "possession" could mean that. But here he uses what is a novel expression in our law—"complete right of possession". I am not sure where that would lead. I do not suppose that the hon. Gentleman is sure about it, either, because it is not a term of art in law. I suppose that it could even be equated to a tenancy in fee simple. I do not pretend to forecast that it would. In any event, however, the distinction between "ownership" and "occupation" has reality only to a freehold or to a long term of years. In the kind of case which might arise here there would be an ordinary short, periodic tenancy where the right of possession was everything and there was really nothing else left at all.
Still on the wording of the Bill, I must point out to the hon. Gentleman that the Bill is mandatory. He did not mention that in his speech, though I am sure only because of inadvertence. When a wife applies for an order, the Bill says that the court "shall" make it. When that is combined with the fact that any act of violence is all that is necessary—and a slap is an act of violence—if there is a conviction for it and the wife then applies for complete possession of the matrimonial home, a court will have no discretion. It will have to grant it. With respect, this does not make sense. It is another matter entirely to empower a court to make such an order in extreme circumstances.
The Bill as presented to the House on Second Reading is absolute in each of the three stages—any act of violence, the mandatory making of an order, and complete right of possession. That is all that there is in the Bill. There is nothing else except the citation clause—and if that were changed in Committee we would finish up with a different Bill.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not feel that I am making a lawyer's speech and showing a total lack of sympathy for people who are ill treated. It is not that at all. We may feel strongly about people who are ill treated, but we still have to regard a Bill before Parliament as a legislative proposal and to ask

ourselves what it will mean if it becomes law and has to be applied by the courts.
I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that it is a valuable exercise to draw attention to the plight of those who are ill treated in the home and one which will be appreciated by all who have heard his speech. However, as a specific legislative proposal the Bill is not one which this House can accept, not even in principle.
I want to say a word on the generality of the subject. It needs saying because again it is one of those subjects which are avoided for fear of embarrassment. I think that hon. Members prefer to leave these topics if they are not forced into participation in them. We have all had letters from Women's Institutes and other bodies which obviously feel strongly about the maltreatment of people inviting us to support this Bill, with which I think they must be unfamiliar.
I regret the growth of the use of the word "battering". It is becoming a political cliché of our time. The word has no precise meaning, and it is not a good one to use in any precise context. What is a battered wife or a battered baby? It is not a word which has an exact meaning. The hon. Gentleman spoke of grievous bodily harm. That has an exact meaning. However, it is not very appropriate in this case, because a person can be convicted of grievous bodily harm without intending to do it. All that is necessary is the intention to do harm. What happens usually is that it turns out to be more serious than expected and results in grievous bodily harm.
The word "batter" is a journalistic word and it has no place in legislation, not even in a title. It is not an aid to thought, whether we speak of babies or of women. It is an emotive word, and if there is one thing that we suffer from at the moment it is the activities of pressure groups who get hold of a phrase like this and push a cause without very close scrutiny of its real merits.
My only experience of this, for what it is worth, was in earlier years after the war, when I had come back from the Navy and was in practice at the Bar and used to do a lot of matrimonial work. I got the impression that the operations of the State are not very beneficial to matrimony. We all know that things go


wrong inside a marriage, but when the State comes in it is rather like a blundering elephant. It has tremendous power for harm and very little for help. The same is true of the intervention of the State between parents and children.
I believe that a good deal of the juvenile delinquency in the two generations since the end of the war has been accounted for by the weakening of the position of parents in the home by legislation and by social work, and even by such well-meaning bodies as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. I felt tremendous sympathy with the West Indian parents, living I believe in Lambeth, when recently a judge referred to the prevalence of "mugging" by coloured youth of white people. That may be true, but what struck me was that the West Indian parents spoke almost in despair of the collapse of family discipline since they came to this country. They could not control their children because they had come to a country in which, apparently, the concept of parents controlling their children was a dying concept.
I believe this is in large measure due to the weakening of the position of the father in particular in the home but also of the parents collectively. We in Parliament, who are, after all, the authors and certainly the authorisers of this kind of intervention by the State in the home, have to ask ourselves some very searching questions: whether on balance, putting things together and looking back over the last 30 years, we have not done more harm than good, and whether, for example, we are not in large measure responsible for the quite appalling divorce rate this year and last year. Whatever our motives may have been, the result of our dispensation has been, apparently, the impending collapse of the family system. I therefore ask the House to look at this kind of Bill with great suspicion, however good its motives, and to look at its essential element.
It is the physical act which founds everything in the Bill. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South, in introducing it, spoke of a breaking of bones and a crushing of the spirit. What about the crushing of the spirit that operates the other way? It is the man, on the whole, who commits the physical act, but

crushing of the spirit can operate both ways. Women have their own ways of wounding men and the reaction of the man may be physical. That starts off the operation in the hon. Gentleman's Bill and all the background has no place. The law simply says "Your wife may have driven you to the point of desperation, but you struck the blow. You are convicted of an act of violence and you are turned out of your own home in perpetuity". That does not make sense, does it?
Suppose that we were to have a Bill which tried to do the opposite and operate where a woman had been convicted of mental cruelty. Of course she cannot be, for there is no such offence, because the law is, on the whole, made by men to regulate men, so we have always treated women very gently in this matter. Suppose, however, that there were a Bill to say that if there was an offence on the part of the wife of having caused mental cruelty to her husband and having provoked him and she was convicted she should be ordered to be excluded from the matrimonial home in perpetuity, mandatorily and without discretion. We should regard that as a very odd Bill and a very foolish thing to do.
I invite the House, whatever feelings of sympathy hon. Members may have and however much they may have been circularised by women's institutes and so on, to take an astringent view of a proposal of this kind, laid before the House on a Friday afternoon, and to say that this is not a case where Parliament should give even its apparent approval in principle to a Bill which, whatever the motives behind it may be, is not a good example of the use of Parliament's power.

2.56 p.m.

Mr. Edward Lyons: My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) has done very valuable work in drawing attention to some of the ways in which women have an inferior status and suffer in their relationship with men in our society. Therefore, I welcome the attempt that he has made in arranging for this Bill once again to demonstrate his feelings on that issue and to concentrate public attention on the inferior status, in many ways, of wives. It is absolutely right to say that wives are too often beaten.


It is certainly correct to say that the police often do not prosecute when they should because, after all, they do not want to interfere, with their manifold other duties, in a domestic situation.
It is also true that many courts, particularly magistrates' courts, take the view that in criminal charges against men for striking their wives they should be treated leniently because, after all, it is not quite the same thing as doing it to a stranger. One is reminded of a story that used to be told in a part of Yorkshire some 25 years ago in relation to charges of incest. Juries in a particular area refused to convict because half of them did not believe that it could happen and the other half were doing it themselves.
For all these reasons one understands why the hon. Member has brought the Bill before the House, but it is not about battered wives. The only mention in the Bill of battered wives occurs not in the substance of the Bill but in the Title, which refers to this as being a Bill about battered wives. In the Bill itself and the preamble the term does not occur, nor does it appear in the text in relation to anything which is to happen under the Bill.
I would have thought that in bringing in the Bill at a time when more and more we are aiming at equality of the sexes the Bill should have referred to "battered spouses", and everything in it should have been reciprocal between the sexes. If there were wives who battered their husbands, in the eyes of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South they could do so with impunity and keep the house. My hon. Friend should have observed that principle of equality.
What I object to is that the Bill does not mention children. When one is considering what should happen to the matrimonial home, one is less worried about the spouses because, if they are able-bodied and can work, they can do something about it, be they male or female. The real issue is what happens to the children. If the woman has children she does not want to leave them. In those circumstances she might endure bad conduct by her husband for the sake of the children, just as a husband might endure bad conduct from a wife.
The test that the court should pursue in considering dispossession of the matrimonial home is how the child will benefit or suffer. That should be the prime consideration. There is no such test in the Bill, and the word "infant" or "child" is not mentioned.
Let us take the case, for example, of a woman who is persistently flighty and whose husband has forgiven her 15 times in 15 years for association with other men. One night he may lose his temper and inflict a single act of violence which, under the Bill, is sufficient for him to lose possession of the house. The house may be worth £10,000 or £20,000 and he has saved for it over most of his married life. According to the Bill, although he has been greatly provoked, one act of violence when perhaps he has been goaded beyond endurance will be sufficient to lose him the house without any discretion in the court to refuse to make the order.
The whole trend of matrimonial law in Britain is to give greater and greater discretion to the judge. Recent legislation in 1970 and 1971 gives more discretion than ever to judges to make a just apportionment of the matrimonial home, the chattels and the wealth. The whole trend is reversed in the Bill. No longer will the judge be given discretion. No longer can he look at the whole panorama of the marriage which is unfolded before him. He has to say "He slapped her face, conviction. Out he goes". The fact that she was slapped because she had performed a welter of actions that did not consort well with matrimony does not matter.
My hon. Friend said that he would insert amendments in the Bill to cater for some of these matters. The Bill is a very short one, and it seems to me that it needs to be made seven or eight times longer. For example, there is no rule-making procedure. In all Acts of this sort provision is made for someone to make rules as to which court the action for possession is brought in, how to go about it, and so on.
In the Matrimonial Homes Act 1967, which enables one spouse to register a charge on a matrimonial home to prevent the other spouse disposing of it, there are provisions for the charge to come to an end. It comes to an end on a decree


absolute or on the application to a court of the spouse against whom the charge is registered. The court can look at the facts and say that it is wrong to register a charge and revoke it. Not so in this Bill; there is no machinery for revoking the charge.
We must remember that if a man has to leave his house—and it may be right that he should—he cannot be left on the street. He is entitled to look for other accommodation. Often when a marriage breaks up it is necessary to sell the matrimonial home so that the proceeds can be divided and both parties have a chance to obtain other accommodation. Under the Bill, once a wife has possession she has the right to remain there for ever, with the result that the husband has no bargaining power. He cannot even ask for half the value of the house or even for £1,000. In the end, he might be reduced to saying "The house is worth £10,000, and the court would have given me half if you had not got this order against me. Now you have the order, you can stay there for the rest of your life and I had better take £200 for my share". That must be wrong. In matrimonial law power should reside in the court to look at all the facts on taking this decision. It is a cardinal error of the Bill that it is mandatory on the court to make the order and it cannot refuse to do so.
The court which tries the criminal offence may be inhibited from convicting the offender. A magistrates' court may hear an allegation that a husband has struck his wife. It may emerge from the evidence that there was a great deal of provocation and that the husband endured a great deal over the years. It will be drawn to the attention of the court that if the man is convicted, albeit on the plainest evidence, he will lose his home. The court may decide not to convict him, even though the evidence shows that it should do so. The court may say "From the evidence which we have heard this man is a better father to the children than the woman is mother. Why should we break up the home? Why should we take this action?"
I take the case of the wife who knows that she has infuriated her husband and that he acted out of character on the one occasion to which the Bill refers. She may say "I have an incentive not to rejoin my husband. Why should I? I

now have my husband 'cold'. I can obtain a conviction against him. That will give me the matrimonial home. I shall not carry on with this marriage", although otherwise it might be worth doing so. She might say "I shall go off with my boy friend". My hon. Friend has said that the Bill will be amended so as to include provisions for cohabitation. There is nothing in the Bill about that. That is an indication of what happens when Government draftsmen do not help in the drawing up of a Bill.
The Matrimonial Proceedings and Property Act and the legislation for the maintenance and financial provision for spouses of the early 1970s are long, as this is a complicated subject. The simplicity of this Bill indicates a lack of appreciation of what is at stake and what is involved. I appreciate the concern of my hon. Friend for wives who are struck by their husbands. I share that concern. However, this Bill is not suitable legislation for inclusion on the statute book.
The Bill does not concern battered wives. The expression "battered" came into prominence as a result of cases involving the battering of children. The word "batter" does not mean a single act of violence. It means a persistent course of conduct. I have been involved in prosecuting and defending cases of battered children. The word "battered" means a mindless, almost compulsive, battering by a man—the husband, the father, or the mother's boy friend living in the house—of a child or children for reasons which he cannot explain, in a heavy and brutal way, time out of number, but not because he is resentful of the child. It is a curious syndrome. Doctors have much to say about it at present. We know what we mean when we talk about battered children. However, a battered wife is a different concept.
A battered wife is a woman who is beaten either because the husband believes that she is not acting correctly, or, more probably, because the husband is suffering from defects of personality and temperament, or because he is overborne by the frustrations of his ordinary life. He is told off by his foreman at work and he returns home and hits his wife. Perhaps his favourite football team loses


by two goals to one, and as a result he batters his wife.
I use the word "batter" in the sense used by my hon. Friend—meaning to beat a wife. But the two meanings are not the same. There is a question of degree involved. If the husband continues to beat his wife the matter should not be dealt with by the domestic courts but should go to the criminal courts. The husband should be punished. However, the concept of possession of the matrimonial home relates not to criminality but to matrimonial law. It should be kept in the domain of matrimonial law. To import this concept of civil and matrimonial law into criminal law is an unwise and retrograde step. It is equating it with a fine, imprisonment or a suspended sentence.
A court that might fine a man £100 for an offence would at the same time be awarding the wife a kind of damages and imposing a fine against the husband which could amount to £5,000 or £10,000. This is putting things out of proportion. If the court feels that a certain fine is required for a particular criminal offence it should impose it.
There is a restitution concept in criminal law. A convicted person cannot be ordered in a magistrates' court to pay more than £400 to a person whom he has assaulted. He may have committed grievous injury to a man but there is a limit on the compensation that can be awarded in the magistrates' court. Under this Bill one blow by a husband, who may just possibly have been driven almost mad over 10 or 15 years, could cost him a life's work. That is not to say that my hon. Friend is not right when he says that nearly all violence in the home comes from the husband. I believe that is right. A man seems to have little regard for the human rights or the dignity of his wife. All too often he resorts to his fists. He seems to think that it is an example of manliness, that it proves his virility.
Whatever the reasons, the Bill does not represent a proper way of punishing him. I agree with my hon. Friend that the law dealing with joint ownership and joint tenancy when there is a matrimonial dispute should be reviewed. Local authorities will change the tenancy from a joint to a single tenancy when the wife has

obtained a matrimonial order against the husband. In that respect the Bill is unnecessary. I agree that in the private home there is no protection and the wife can find herself in great difficulty. There ought to be a much clearer and easier way of dealing with the situation and deciding who has the matrimonial home. This should be dealt with in the matrimonial or civil court when the marriage breaks up. That seems absolutely right, and it is an area which should be explored.
My hon. Friend, with his indefatigable energy, would do well to try to bring forward a Bill in the next Session to clarify the rights of the joint spouse when the marriage breaks up, but without reference to the criminal courts. That seems to be the right way of dealing with it. I have one paramount reason for believing this. What happens when the wife is too frightened to take the husband to court? The Bill demands a conviction. In my experience of divorce cases involving the most atrocious cruelty, the wife has never taken the husband to the criminal court. To the matrimonial court, yes. To the criminal court, no. She is terrified of complaining to the police. When she does the police say "Matrimonial dispute. Nothing to do with us".
The result is that most wives who are beaten up regularly do not mount a criminal prosecution against their husband. There is no conviction. In such circumstances they would gain no benefit from the Bill. What my hon. Friend or the Government ought to do is to bring forward a Bill covering all wives—and husbands—who are beaten up regularly and need protection, not just those very few who manage to obtain a conviction against their spouse in the criminal court.

3.13 p.m.

Mr. Michael Shersby: Although the Bill clearly contains many defects, it at least provides a useful opportunity for the House to discuss the problem of marital violence and the so-called problem of battered wives. There is nothing particularly new about this problem. Presumably it has been with us since the earliest times. What is new is that today there is public interest in it and a desire to help the unfortunate women concerned. Public interest has


also been aroused by the work of the Select Committee on Violence in Marriage, whose report we await with considerable interest.
I would like to tell the House something of the background to this problem as it exists in my constituency of Uxbridge, which is part of the London borough of Hillingdon. Having seen the Bill, I made it my business to find out the background to the problem. I thought that it would help me to evaluate my attitude to the Bill and respond to the many constituents who have written to me on this subject.
There has been a good deal of concern in recent months in the London borough of Hillingdon about the children of violent households who are put at risk, both physically and emotionally, by the violence which exists between their parents. This point was raised earlier and I entirely agree that the House should direct its attention to the problems of the children of such parents.
The suggestion has been put forward to the local authority of Hillingdon that, depending on the size of the problem, there might be a need to provide accommodation and advice specifically for battered wives and their children in order that women can have a refuge in which to sort out their problems and decide on a future course of action to protect the children who might be involved. Accordingly, an interesting research document has recently been published by the social services department. One of the results of that research might be that we in Hillingdon have a refuge of the kind I have just described.
One of the great difficulties that arises is the difficulty of knowing how best to deal with battered wives. The fundamental difficulty is in ascertaining the extent of the problem.
In the past two days, I have carried out some research into its extent in my constituency. It is difficult to evaluate the problem. It requires detailed consultation between the local authority, its housing department and its housing advice centre and the area health authority, the Citizens' Advice Bureau, the Samaritans and so on. The borough of Hillingdon found after consultations with these various schools of thought that a complete picture was not forthcoming, because there are

inevitably considerable overlaps between one agency and another. However, in the final analysis it seemed reasonable to plan for about 12 cases a year.
I mention Hillingdon's experience to illustrate the considerable research that has been undertaken in this outer London borough and to enable it to be compared with the size of the problem that may exist in some of the big cities in our country. In my constituency I have to cater for approximately 12 cases a year. I have discovered that it is difficult to sort out the difference between the number of referrals to the various social agencies that exist and the actual number of cases which involve wife battering.
The Bill before us today is well-intentioned because of the reputations of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) and his colleagues who have sponsored it. It has, however, a number of considerable defects, some of which have already been referred to by hon. Members. It is to those defects and omissions that I should like in a friendly way to draw attention this afternoon.
The Bill provides simply that the right of possession of the matrimonial home shall be transferred to the battered wife following conviction of the man. That is a quite sweeping power. It makes no mention of various differences—for example, whether the matrimonial home is a council house. It makes no reference to the property rights of men and women or to houses in the private sector which are mortgaged.
It is not clear from the Bill whether possession means ownership, although the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South indicated earlier that to his way of thinking possession meant occupation. There is no indication in the Bill whether occupation is to be transferred on a temporary or a permanent basis. Although the hon. Gentleman has referred to the desirability of its being on a permanent basis, he gave no precise indication of the length of time he had in mind.
There is no mention in the Bill of the specific position of council tenancies. Are they to be transferred to the battered wife temporarily or permanently in the case where a conviction is obtained? Is this to be approved by the local authority, or is it a matter which shall rest entirely with the courts? As I understand the


Bill, from the way it is drafted the matter will rest entirely with the courts. That is a subject on which my local authority would like to have a say because of its deep involvement through its social services department.
It is clear, therefore, that the effect of the Bill, if it were enacted, on a council tenant is such that local authorities should be consulted and that they should have a part to play in deciding the fate of the matrimonial home. I believed that most councils regard the man as the tenant, whereas only a few insist on joint tenancies. That is a point which could well do with examination. The hon. Gentleman may feel that the position of local authority tenancies is something which could usefully be examined with a view to encouraging local authorities to offer joint tenancies to husband and wife.
Another question which arises is what happens to the man tenant, owner or mortgagor if and when possession is given to the battered wife. I assume that unless he had other children, perhaps of another marriage, he would become completely homeless and that there would not be any obligation on the local authority to house him. Until one can give an answer to this sort of question, it is difficult to know whether possession of the matrimonial home by itself will really help the battered wife as much as the sponsors of the Bill clearly hope will be the case.
Surely the greatest problem that any wife who is the victim of this type of assault experiences is the need to have protection. This can happen only where she can find a home where she is protected from further assault. The majority of wives living in private homes find that their first refuge is with their relatives, who can support them for the time being. Very often they can then seek redress through the courts and can obtain their share of the proceeds of the matrimonial home if and when it comes to be sold. This category of wife would then find herself with some funds at her disposal. She would be able to think of buying again and would be able to seek help from the local authority or perhaps from a building society in obtaining a new mortgage, in such a way as to enable her to rebuild her life. So much depends on whether or not the wife is able to work

to earn sufficient to meet the mortgage repayments and to provide for her children.
One of the very real problems in this area is that even with possession of the matrimonial home the man can often return and a further assault can take place, so that possession by itself might not necessarily be the answer to the problem. In a hostel, for example, there is more protection than in the matrimonial home in many cases. The hostel, as I have said, provides a refuge. Such hostels are usually situated in a relatively few locations where the police are aware of their existence and are able to keep them under supervision. This in itself provides a real degree of protection to the battered wife. I am therefore firmly of the opinion that temporary refuge is essential, that it is an early priority and that possession of the matrimonial home should come only at a later stage.
In considering the question of possession as it is provided for in Clause 1, I should like to know whether possession would make the wife a tenant of a joint household. This is a very important point, and it is certainly not clear because the hon. Gentleman said that to his way of thinking possession meant occupation. If the wife is to be the tenant of a joint household, presumably if she sold the home, if that were possible, she would have to share the proceeds with her husband. It seems possible, therefore, that a battered wife might be better off with a temporary order if the man were off the scene for example, if he were in prison.
I hope, therefore, that the hon. Gentleman will deal with this difficult problem of ownership if he is given the opportunity to reply to the debate. I know that he dealt with it in his opening remarks, but perhaps he or one of his hon. Friends will expand on it. For example, is it proposed that a man's property rights are to be completely expunged if his wife is given possession? This question must be dealt with. It has been raised by my hon. and learned Friend, the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Bell) and others. The situation is certainly not clear. The Bill is defective because it makes no distinction between possession and occupation.
If the Bill is to be given a Second Reading today, I believe that consideration should also be given to doing something for battered wives much earlier


along the line—in other words, before they get to the position of applying to the courts for possession of the matrimonial home.
Surely the real gap in social provision at present is that of dealing with the problem of assault, the problem which arises immediately after assault and the need for the battered wife to have protection in a suitable refuge. The problem clearly needs a comprehensive solution. That is one reason why I think we should await the report of the Select Committee which is looking into this subject. When we have the report of the Select Committee we shall be able to consider this problem again because, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South knows, by the inevitable mathematics of parliamentary time this Bill cannot pass through all its stages in the present Session of Parliament.
I should like to express my gratitude to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South for giving us the opportunity of discussing this important problem. But we need a good deal more information yet. I look forward to getting that information from the Select Committee. Today's debate has provided us with a useful opportunity to discuss the problem and to return to it in a positive way later in the year.

3.28 p.m.

Mr. Christopher Price: I should like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) for raising this subject. I realise that a Select Committee of this House is discussing this whole matter. Nevertheless, it is useful to have debates of this kind in the House, even while a Select Committee is sitting, in order that public opinion may be better informed and the Select Committee helped by our discussions here.
I am glad to make a contribution to the debate since Lewisham's first hostel for battered wives is in my part of the borough. Indeed, Lewisham was among the first of the London boroughs to set up one of these hostels. Although I am convinced that setting up refuges—hostels—for women in this situation is an important part of public policy, it is clear from the problems which have been thrown up in the first year of operation of the Mayow Road Hostel in Lewisham that

it is not the whole answer. To borrow a phrase from the Prime Minister, we need a battery of weapons—that is perhaps not the happiest of phrases in this context—to deal with what I suspect has always been a serious problem, but a problem of which the public are becoming aware. When the public become aware of these problems, it is incumbent upon Parliament to take action.
The Bill has been criticised for its simplicity. Would that that criticism were made of more Bills! I wish that we could have one or two more simple Bills. This is indeed a simple Bill. It is, if I might echo Pope Gregory or whoever said it, sancta simplicitas. It has only a couple of clauses in it. However, it is none the worse for that.
Whenever a perfectly straightforward Bill is introduced which in plain English says just what ought to happen, inevitably we get one lawyer after another explaining from their long experience in the law courts why it is impossible for any Act of Parliament to be stated in perfectly simple straightforward terms. I am intent on simplifying the legislation.
One or two hon. Members, including the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Bell), who apologised to me for having to leave, have criticised use of the epithet "battered". It is a word which has crept into common parlance and is about to creep into parliamentary and legal jargon without having a clear meaning. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that nobody knows what a battered wife is. If he would come with me to the hostel for battered wives in my constituency, it would be obvious to him what it meant from the stories which the women told. It is like the story about the difference between an elephant and a letter box: we know an elephant when we see one. I am sure that battered wives are a clear and distinct phenomenon, and it is plain that the phrase will obtain a clear legal meaning as it is used in the courts.
I do not wish to engage in the nitpicking in which previous speakers have engaged, partly because I am not a lawyer and partly because the details of the Bill can be discussed in Committee, if it reaches there. Everyone is assuming that this Session will end in October, but there is no law of the Medes and Persians,


about it. There is no constitutional absolutism which states that Sessions must end in October. In rapidly moving situations such as that in which we are now, all sorts of things can happen. Therefore, we should not make too many absolute assumptions about the lengths of Sessions. Assuming that the Bill gets to Committee, there will be chance to deal with many of the criticisms that have been made, such as that about the meaning of the word "violence" and the absolutism of the words "the court shall make such an order".
I am very much in favour of the Bill because it backs up three principles for which I have been fighting for many years. The first is that of women's emancipation. I was very keen that the Abortion Bill of 1966 should be passed, not so much for the reasons which other people advanced, but because I felt that it swung the balance of power slightly further towards women and away from men, with whom it had historically remained over the generations.
The Bill is an expression of a genuine change in public opinion that women's emancipation in terms of the franchise in the late 19th century and early 20th century did not go far enough towards genuine emancipation and many of the Women's Lib Bills being introduced now go towards women's emancipation in a much more real sense than did the sort of emancipation which women thought they were getting 40, 50, 60 or 70 years ago.
I am also in favour of the Bill because it stands for the preservation of the family. The hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield said he was against the Bill because he believed in the preservation of the family, but I am very keen on the preservation of the family and in this sort of situation, family, in reality, means the mother and her children. It means keeping them together in the sort of housing in which they can support each other. Where there is a matrimonial home in which this can take place, we should declare legislatively that this should happen whenever possible.
I also support the Bill's attitude to housing. There has been much talk in the debate about the property rights of men and the degree to which the Bill would erode them. If the Bill does erode

the property rights of men, so be it. I have fought all my political life for housing to be treated as a social service and not as part of the property mechanism of the country. The Bill backs up the concept of our housing stock as a social service and not as part of historic property handed down from one person to another. This is absolutely right.
This is not a perfect Bill and, if it gets into Committee, it will have to be amended, but I think my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South has done a tremendous service to the House in introducing the Bill and making this debate possible. I wholeheartedly support him in his efforts.

3.38 p.m.

Mr. Carol Mather: The House finds itself in a difficult, but not untypical, situation. We have found in the past that a problem arises in society and gets a great deal of publicity, there are demands for action, we set up a Select Committee to study the problem and an hon. Member introduces a Bill which arrives here in advance of the Committee's report.
We have seen that the House is divided on the Bill. I think the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) has done a service to the House in bringing forward his Bill. I think he realised it had no chance of reaching the statute book, but felt the problem should be aired. If legislation is necessary, it must be brought in after proper consideration and we have set up a Select Committee for this purpose.
Various opinions have been expressed today about the operation of the Bill. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Bell), from his legal background, made various criticisms, in particular that one act of violence would lead to the husband losing the home of the marriage. Also, the hon. and learned Member for Bradford West (Mr. Lyons), made similar criticisms from a strictly legal point of view showing that the provisions have to be carefully examined if this is to be sensible law.
My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) spoke of his personal experience. Like many of us, he has been receiving letters from women all over the country. He related his speech to


children, and said that the effects of the Bill on children must be considered. He also drew attention to the difficulties of making over a home when one is involved in a mortgage or if it is a local authority home in which the husband probably holds the lease.
Much more consideration needs to be given to these matters before the Bill is passed. We should ask several questions. First, is this a suitable subject for legislation, or can it best be dealt with through the social services? Second, might one find that after a possibly violent man had been driven from the home, the woman became a further victim of his attacks, because of his resentment? Finally, most hon. Members will agree, I think, that the best approach is to let the Select Committee do its work and then consider whether a Bill is necessary and, if so, what kind of Bill.

3.43 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Law Officers' Department (Mr. Arthur Davidson): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) on the characteristically admirable and moving way in which he presented the Bill I think that the whole House agrees with its purposes and motives, but, as hon. Member after hon. Member has said, there are certain practical defects—not only in the drafting but in the way in which these provisions would apply.
As my hon. Friend acknowledge when he was given leave to introduce the Bill in January this year, the Government are aware of the problems and are trying to deal with them. He also acknowledged that there are some obvious defects in the Bill. In particular, it contains an inflexible provision to which several hon. Members have referred.
I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Bell) about the used of the word "battered". It is an inelegant word that would hardly be a great adornment to the statue book. It is a loose term, of slang rather than of definition. I am not at all sure how it has suddenly, in the past few months, become almost a popular phrase. However, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Lyons)

said, the Bill does not deal with battered wives at all.
For many of the reason that have already been given, the Government cannot recommend this Bill in its present form, much as they sympathise with the motives behind it. First, I point out that the problem of violence in marriage—reference has already been made to this—has been the subject of detailed consideration by a Joint Working Party of the Home Office and the Law Commission on Matrimonial Proceedings in Magistrates' Courts. It published a working paper in September 1973 suggesting that in place of the existing cohabitation provision—which the magistrates can insert in a matrimonial order declaring that a couple are no longer bound to live together—the courts should be given power to make a "non-molestation order".
It is, I suggest, significant that the working party considered that it would be inappropriate for such orders to be obtained in criminal proceedings, a view with which I feel sure the House might have considerable sympathy. It is generally agreed, I believe, that matrimonial affairs should be kept strictly segregated from criminal matters and from the criminal courts if at all possible.

Mr. Lewis Carter-Jones: In view of the fact that it now looks fairly obvious that the Bill is to be talked out, and if the state of the law is in doubt, would not it be preferable, while the legal problems are being resolved, for the Government to embrace the Disablement Commissioner Bill, which could temporarily resolve the housing problem of the battered wife?

Mr. Davidson: I appreciate my hon. Friend's point, but the Bill with which he is concerned is not my responsibility. I have to deal with this particular Bill and I must answer some of the points that have been made.
I think it is agreed that matrimonial affairs should as far as possible be kept segregated from criminal matters in the criminal courts. The type of order proposed by the working party would be enforceable by a fine or imprisonment on the model of the injunction which can be at present granted by the divorce court.
The working party also invited views on whether a magistrate should be empowered to attach a condition to a non-molestation order preventing the husband from entering the matrimonial home. Such a condition would not affect the rights of ownership or tenancy of the house and would be without prejudice to any future determination which the superior courts might make as to the rights of ownership and occupation of the home. It would be designed simply to deal with the immediate problem ad hoc.
The working party's recommendations have been warmly welcomed in a consultation on the working paper, and I am happy to tell the House that the Law Commission is now preparing a report and draft clauses on this subject, which the Government and my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor await with interest.
Secondly, as the House may well know, the Law Commission is currently engaged in a broad-based study which covers legal rights of ownership and occupation of the matrimonial home. Its report on this, which will deal with the longer-term aspects of the matter, and the report on matrimonial proceedings in magistrates' courts are expected later this year.
Thirdly, as the hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Mather) has quite rightly pointed out, the Select Committee on Violence in Marriage is at present sitting. Its terms of reference are
to consider the extent, nature and causes of the problems of families where there is violence between the partners or where children suffer non-accidental injury; and to make recommendations.
I believe that it would be wrong—and I am sure the House will agree with me—to act prematurely and in advance of the findings of the Select Committee. If we pasesd the Bill we would obviously prejudge the very issues which the Select Committee is consdering carefully.
I have pointed out already, as have other hon. Members, that the Bill has major defects in the terms in which it is drafted. Clause 1(1) states:
Where—

(a) a man has been convicted of an act of violence against his wife, and
(b) his wife makes application to the court for an order to be made giving her com-

plete right of possession of the matrimonial home,
the court shall make such an order.
This provision would require the court to make the order described. There would be no course open to the court but to make the order once the two preconditions were satisfied. Regardless of the degree of violence, regardless of the circumstances in which the violence was committed, regardless of the relationship between the parties, the court would have no discretion but to grant the order.
To deprive the courts of the discretion which they have long held would be highly undesirable. It is a recognised principle in matters of this kind that the courts should be free to deal with each case on its merits. Under the terms of the Bill, they would be unable to do so.
The Bill would also be confined to cases where the husband had been convicted, presumably of a criminal offence. However, it is a common feature of situations where there has been violence committed by a husband on his wife that criminal proceedings are started but are later dropped because the wife, when it comes to the point of going to the court, is reluctant to give evidence against her husband which may result in his being sent to prison. In many cases of domestic violence, no criminal proceedings are instituted at all. The reasons are obvious. The wife does not want to get involved. The quarrel is patched up. She goes to the police, and the police say it is a domestic matter.
There is also the point that this would not provide a speedy remedy. Since there would first have to be a criminal trial, such proceedings would have to be started by the wife, and the offence committed by the husband would have to be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
One further matter that I should mention, though perhaps it is less important, is that under the terms of subsection (1) the wife who is the victim of her husband's violence would first have to obtain a conviction against him before she could obtain an order. In fact, the wife would be much better off under the present law because, in circumstances where there has been grave violence—

Mr. Ashley: I have the greatest respect for my hon. Friend, but I am now


beginning to suspect that I shall not have an opportunity to reply to the many fallacious points which have been raised during the debate. I ask my hon. Friend to consider, when he speaks of the provisions of the Bill applying to any kind of violence, that that is quite wrong. I specified in my speech that it would be for grevious bodily harm. What is more, when hon. Members speak of the defects of the Bill, it appears that they did not hear me say that I should be prepared to consider various matters in Committee. If we are to have a Committee stage, all these points can be considered. However, a great many false points have been raised in the course of various speeches—not by my hon. Friend but by other hon. Members. I regret deeply that these bogus points have been raised, because they are not really against this Bill at all. These are points which could be made against other Bills but I specifically said that I had put forward a 15-point policy to be followed. The limitations of the Bill are obvious, but that does not mean that the points that I have previously raised are invalid.

Mr. Davidson: My hon. Friend said that on the definition of violence he had in mind grevious bodily harm. That is a very serious offence, in many cases so serious that it is unlikely that it could be proved by the court. In those circumstances, as my hon. Friend will appreciate, the wife who has been assaulted in a less serious way would not benefit at all by the Bill. Whilst I appreciate what my hon. Friend has to say, I really must assure him—and we have been colleagues for many years—that most of the defects in the Bill to which reference has been made are very real defects. In many circumstances the wife, far from benefiting under the Bill, would be in a worse position than she is today.

Mr. Ivor Clemitson: On the point of the definition of "violence", is my hon. Friend making the point that the definition is deficient in that a court could include any form of violence, a point made earlier by several hon. Members? Or is he saying that the defect is precisely because the violence is confined to very serious violence, and therefore that wives who may be the subject to

considerable violence but violence less serious than grievous bodily harm may not benefit from the Bill? These are two different points, are they not?

Mr. Davidson: Under the Bill as it is presently drafted there is no definition at all of "violence", and violence would be a very difficult word to define adequately. Whilst one or two hon. Members have suggested that the criticisms of the Bill have been lawyers' criticisms, I must tell my hon. Friend that it is the courts of law which will have to interpret the Bill and act under its terms, and unless a really satisfactory definition of "violence" were included in the Bill—one that would include, I suppose, the lesser acts of violence and more serious acts of violence—then, despite the good intentions of the Bill, the very people whom my hon. Friend wishes to protect would not be given the help he desires.
It is only right to tell the House the background against which the Bill must be examined. It is only right to look at the present position of a wife who is assaulted by her husband—and there has been no mention of this so far—and the protection that the law can give her, because the law offers her considerable protection even if there is a serious defect in the law at present. For practical purposes, the present short-term civil relief available is an injunction from a divorce court.
There are two main kinds of injunction, one to exclude the husband from the matrimonial home, and another to order him not to molest his wife and children. The power of courts to grant injunctions is defined in Section 45 of the Supreme Court of Judicature (Consolidation) Act, 1925:
The High Court may grant … an injunction … by an interlocutory order in all cases in which it appears to the court to be just or convenient so to do.
Order 29, Rule 1 of the Rules of the Supreme Court provides that an application for the grant of an injunction may be made by any party to a cause or matter before or after the trial of the cause or matter"—

It being Four o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Debate to be resumed what day? No day named.

DISABLEMENT COMMISSIONER BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

SOCIAL SECURITY (AGE OF ENTITLEMENT TO RETIREMENT PENSION) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

LIQUOR LICENSING BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (ENABLING) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

PUBLICATION OF WILLS BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

POLICE (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

REQUISITIONING OF EMPTY HOUSES BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

RESIDENTIAL BOATS (SECURITY OF TENURE) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Monday next.

SAFETY PACKAGING FOR MEDICINES BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

HEALTH AND SAFETY AT WORK (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

PROTECTION OF MENTALLY RETARDED PERSONS (EVIDENCE) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

HOUSING (SHORTHOLD TENANCIES) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

COMPANIES BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

ACCESS TO SOLICITORS (ARRESTED PERSONS) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

SEXUAL OFFENCES (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

RATING REFORM BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

CINEMATOGRAPH AND INDECENT DISPLAYS BILL

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Second Reading [31st January].

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading further adjourned till Friday next.

SOLICITORS (AMENDMENT) BILL [Lords]

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

RAPE (ANONYMITY OF VICTIMS) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

Hon. Members: Object.

CHILD PROTECTION (MEDICINES) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE (AMENDMENT) (No. 2) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

CARAVAN SITES ACT 1968 (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

STANDARDISATION OF CONTAINERS BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

COMMON OWNERSHIP BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ACT 1876 (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

HOUSE OF COMMONS DISQUALIFICATION (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS ACT 1695 (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

DIVORCE (SCOTLAND) BILL [Lords]

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Monday next.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. This is the sixth Scottish Bill that has been objected to by an hon. Member. When will the Government provide time to discuss extremely important Scottish matters?

Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Would you point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton), who has some experience of boxing under the Queensberry Rules that he is hardly doing that on this occasion. He is hitting below the belt, and that is scarcely worthy of a Member of this House.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Myer Galpern): Order. I have many and varied responsibilities, but they do not include the power to direct the Government to bring forward any legislation in this House. The hon. Gentleman will have to take his query to another place.

ABOLITION OF COHABITATION RULE BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

MOTOR-CYCLE CRASH HELMETS (RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

NATIONALISATION OF THE DUCHIES OF LANCASTER AND CORNWALL BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Thomas Cox.]

CYCLISTS

4.7 p.m.

Sir George Young: After that entirely negative performance by the Government Front Bench, I warn the Government that I look for a much more positive response to this Adjournment debate.
I can think of no better time to initiate a debate on improved facilities for the cyclist than at 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon as London's traffic congeals into an immovable mass, and no better place than this Chamber, a stone's throw from Parliament Square, where the traffic congestion was once so bad that a British Prime Minister was forced to telephone across the world to complain to the leader of the Greater London Council about it. And as you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, inch your car into the traffic in Parliament Square at 4.35 p.m. you might well ask yourself whether some of your fellow drivers might not with advantage to themselves as well as advantage to yourself travel on two wheels instead of four.
I raise this subject on the Adjournment on behalf of the 80,000 Londoners who cycle regularly to work every day, on behalf of the tens of thousands of other cyclists who would like to do so and also on behalf of the 18 million cyclists in this country.
As an example of the potential if adequate provision is made, in Stevenage where a grade-separated system of bicycle routes has been constructed between one-third and one-half of all journeys are made by bicycle. Therefore, the potential exists and is a prize worth grasping.
In 1968 the then Mr. Ernest Marples, himself a keen cyclist, said
There is a great future for the bicycle if you make the conditions right. If you make them wrong there isn't any future.
Up to 1971 bicycle usage declined mainly because the conditions were wrong and the planners assumed that the car would ultimately displace other forms of

personal transport. They were misguided, but unfortunately their prophecies were fulfilled because inadequate provision for the cyclist was made in the transport plans drawn up during that period.
We must remember that half the households in this country do not have access to a car. Even in those households which possess a car it does not cater for all the travel needs of the family. The escalating cost of petrol and of buying and running a car have meant a shift in its relative importance to other transport modes such as the bicycle, which can now be bought for the same amount of money as the cost of an annual road fund licence.
Although the Government have not lifted one finger to help the cyclist, there has been a dramatic growth in cycling since 1971. The proposition I wish to put to the Minister this afternoon is that if the Government's attitude where to change from one of cautious indifference to one of positive encouragement, the benefit to society in terms of energy saving, of a better environment and of the improved health of the British public would be enormous.
I refer first to energy conservation. If commuters whose homes are less than five miles from their work were to cycle to work instead of going by car, we should save about £300 million a year. The bicycle is the most efficient converter of energy to movement, as a cyclist does the equivalent of 1,600 miles to the gallon. The energy required to manufacture a bicycle is 1 per cent. of that required to manufacture a car. There is a clear advantage in terms of the use of energy.
I next refer to the environment. The bicycle is pollution-free and the least offensive of all transport modes. On behalf of cyclists I have drawn up a short shopping list, or cyclists' charter, to put to the Minister this afternoon in the confident expectation of provoking a positive response from him.
I would like to see a bicycle unit within the Department of the Environment whose job it would be to collate and disseminate information on provision for the bicycle. There are 1,700 civil servants within the Department, many working on road schemes which the country can no longer afford. Surely a dozen or so could usefully be transferred to a bicycle unit


which could advise local authorities, British Rail and others on measures to encourage cycling. It could start by looking at the positive measures taken overseas to help the cyclist.
Then we come on to the Royal Parks, which are the responsibility of the Minister's Department. At virtually no cost, the Minister could make available to cyclists short cuts through the Royal parks instead of sending the cyclist round the periphery with the car. Hyde Park, for example, is used by many of my constituents who bicycle to work. They notice the preferential treatment given to motorists, pedestrians and even to horse-riders. But there are no cycle routes. Here is an opportunity for the Minister to make an imaginative and positive gesture to the cycling community and to convince it of his good faith. There are many other urban areas with open space which could be used by the cyclist at no disadvantage to anyone else.
Next I turn to safety. The major deterrent to the cyclist and potential cyclist is the risk of an accident. Many parents today are somewhat reluctant to allow their children on the roads on bicycles because of the risks of accidents. Some other recommendations, namely the segregation of the cycle from the car, would overcome the worst fears. But we still need more proficiency courses for children and more training schemes for adults and children alike to increase knowledge of the use of the cycle. The motorists must also be educated to allow for the cyclist since careless driving by motorists is the most frequent cause of accident.
My next point deals with advice to local authorities. I am sure that the day is not far off when the Minister will feel impelled to send yet another circular to local authorities. In it he could include a section on the provisions they should be making for the bicycle. He should stress that in all new developments, particularly town centre schemes—if there are any left—provision should be made not just to cater for today's bicyclist but to encourage the bicyclist of tomorrow by separating his journey from the motorist and seeing that there is adequate parking provision.
The Minister should encourage local authorities in urban areas to identify cycle priority routes suitable for use by

the cyclist. These would probably be existing roads that are relatively free from heavy traffic, well signposted and preferably flat, and with suitable provision for crossing the main roads in safety. One such scheme has been drafted by Friends of the Earth for Lambeth, and it is well described in the friendly and earthy publication "Give Way" which the Minister has, of course, read and reread.
Another scheme is due to start in Portsmouth, demonstrating the feasibility of local authorities designating cycle networks. The Minister's Department should monitor and encourage these developments and urge local authorities which have done no work in this direction to get on with it.
Now I come to the controversial subject of travel allowances. At the moment employees of the central Government, local authorities and major firms, and indeed Members of Parliament, get a mileage allowance if they travel by car. If they do the same journey by bicycle, saving the country petrol, creating no noise and fumes, they receive not one penny. I ask the Minister to say whether he believes it right that there should be this official incentive to use the car and this official disincentive to use the bicycle. When he has concluded that it is, of course, quite wrong, I ask him to consider reducing mileage allowance and using the money so saved to pay a bicycle allowance to encourage the use of the bicycle on official journeys. If he wants a trial scheme, he could start with Members of Parliament, many of whom need some gentle daily exercise to keep them in proper condition.
Next I ask the Minister to consider giving the cyclist a five or 10 seconds start over the motorist at traffic lights. In Holland this measure has been introduced and it gives the cyclist time to build up the necessary speed to ensure stability before the cars start overtaking him.
No debate on improved facilities for the cyclist would be complete without paying tribute to British Rail's fearless campaign to keep bicycles from its stations and off its trains. Its first line of defence is simply to make no provision whatsoever for the cyclist at railway stations. At some of London's major terminals there is nowhere to leave a bicycle.
When that line of defence becomes untenable, British Rail retreat to its second line, namely exorbitant tariffs for leaving bicycles at stations. At my local station the daily charge for parking a car is 22p. Since one gets 20 bicycles in the space occupied by one car, economic logic would dictate a tariff of 1p per day for the bicycle. Economic logic is, however, a discipline left behind by British Rail many years ago, and the tariff for a bicycle is 17p a day—80 per cent. of the tariff for a car.
Its third line of defence is reserved for the cyclist who breaks through the first two and wishes to put his bicycle on the train. Although British Rail allows a passenger to take his luggage with him on the train for no charge, if the luggage happens to be bicycle-shaped it attracts a tariff of no less than half the adult fare. It is up to the Minister responsible for British Rail to knock some sense into it and to call for a truce in this senseless campaign against the cyclist.
The cyclist and the train make a perfect match if one wishes to encourage the maximum amount of personal mobility and at the same time discourage use of petrol.
The four final points of my shopping list all relate to British Rail. First, there should be more covered spaces at stations for bicycles. Secondly, there should be tariffs for these spaces which encourage people to bicycle to the station. Thirdly, there should be a flat fare of 20p for taking a bicycle on a train. Finally, there should be facilities for hiring bicycles at the major terminals.
There are other measures which I should like to mention in the short time available to me. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Steen) and the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) will catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and raise some of the points that I have not had time to mention.
The bicycle has the potential to provide the majority of the British people with a quiet, cheap, clean, healthy and flexible form of transport.
With the measures that I have outlined, the potential can be achieved, and some of the rusty 13 million bicycles and some of the equally rusty 18 million cyclists

can play their part in tackling the economic crisis and improving the environment in our towns and country. We all look to the Government to give a lead.

4.17 p.m.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) on raising this subject today and particularly on the way in which he has presented his case. He must have been influenced by the election address of his opponent in the last General Election but one, in which many of these arguments were put forward.
I declare an interest because I use a bicycle quite a lot. It is interesting to note the number of people, especially young people, who cycle. Young people today are far more sensible than their elders about the use and hire of bicycles and, therefore, perhaps, use the National Health Service less because of the fitness that they gain from cycling.
The alternative mobility system which the bicycle plus the train provides is important for those who move around on their own taxable incomes. Unfortunately, as the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton said, British Rail is stupid, shortsighted and pig-headed on this matter. The cycle plus the train is the quickest and most convenient link between two places. However, British Rail does its very best to stop that link.
I support the hon. Gentleman's idea of a 20p flat fare. Years ago one was not even charged half fare for a bicycle. There were zone charges of a nominal amount. This month British Rail has sent out booklets to 10 million homes in a new drive for more passengers. The Press release says:
British Rail is mounting a massive campaign throughout July to persuade people to travel by train, by getting information about services and fares into some ten million homes
The booklet talks about:
Drive a car at the end of the line".
but does not say anything about bicycles. In my area of London we could well do with this 20p fare. Young people from Stratford, Barking and East Ham could go on the electrified line on a Saturday and Sunday—the trains are not well used—pay the flat fare, have a cycle in the country and come home. I am not sug-


gesting that they should necessarily have a cheaper return fare than they would pay normally, but the fact they they cannot do this because of the stupidity and bone-headed nature of British Rail makes this publicity drive, which it is now promoting, even more questionable than it otherwise might be.

4.19 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Steen: I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) on raising what on the face of it appears often to many people a somewhat frivolous subject but which is, I suggest, a very serious subject to which the Minister should pay due regard, and especially to the suggestions made by my hon. Friend, and should take some understanding into his Department of the importance of this subject to the health of the nation.
First, I should like to declare an interest. Like the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), I am one of the few "authentic" Members who actually uses the cycle as his ordinary means of conveyance. My experience stems from my cycle tourist club days of some 10 years ago. I am now a 10-miles-a-day man, five days a week, cycling from Earls Court to Westminster, in all weathers, at all times of the day and night.
The problems confronting cyclists in London are shared by cyclists in many parts of the country. First, there is a bad pollution problem, particularly in summer. There are not enough scientific inventions to deal with the problems facing the cyclist—unless he wears goggles and a clothes peg over his nose to help him block out the fumes, which are very serious if one is cycling in streets which are narrow and closed to air circulation.
Secondly, the Minister should take steps to see that the phasing of traffic lights is not such as to discriminate against the cyclist travelling at 12 m.p.h. If a cyclist seeks to travel in any of the main thoroughfares going out of London, he often finds himself caught on the red phase. This happens over and over again. As to the Russian roulette situation around Hyde Park Corner or Buckingham Palace, steps should be taken in such situations to establish cycle lanes. There have been a number of serious accidents

in major cities caused by cyclists being caught between vehicles in such busy circulations of traffic.
Thirdly, there is inadequate provision with regard to parking and the provision of traffic lanes. Whilst cars and taxis treat the cyclist with deference, bus drivers are a little less careful of cyclists in bus lanes. Will the Minister confirm that bicycles can be used in bus lanes and that this is his intention?
Cycling is good for one. It is good for the country. Whilst one saves the nation's energy, one is using one's own supply. As transportation costs increase, more and more people will turn to pedalling.
I support my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton in suggesting that a cycling unit be established in the Department by the Minister with the aim of gaining a focus and an interest in all transport legislation which is laid before the House and to see that cyclists' rights are preserved and maintained.

4.23 p.m.

The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Mr. Denis Howell): It is very interesting that the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Steen) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) have taken advantage of the last half hour this week to raise this very interesting matter. My only regret is that we do not have more time to discuss it. I absolutely agree with their basic case. I am sure that we can return to the subject on other occasions when we shall have more time to deploy the various points that have been raised.
The hon. Members have raised the question of safety. Very regrettably at present—and this largely makes their case—cycling is much the most dangerous method of travelling around this country, in 1973 alone there were 4,757 deaths, of which 2,041 were of children. Of those casualties 80 per cent. took place in urban situations, which again underlines the difficulties and the need for some special arrangements if local authorities will take them in hand.
I hope, therefore, that on the safety ground local authorities will look at the question of special cycle lanes—although obviously, with our present


economic difficulties and with a cut-back in many local authority services imminent—this is hardly the time for Parliament to be urging local authorities to fresh expenditure. However, as and when they can do it, I hope that they will.
I was interested in the suggestion of differential timing at traffic lights. That would be a costly operation. In principle, if we are to encourage people to take up the cycle, there is a lot to be said for it. However, it would mean that one would first have to give pedestrians the right to go when a special light changed to green, and then allow another 10 seconds for cyclists, and the remainder for the motorists. I do not know quite how the motoring public would take that. But it is an interesting suggestion and perhaps there will be opportunity at some time for an experiment. We could not suggest that the very expensive business of changing all the traffic lights to bring that about could be undertaken now, but, as I have said, it ought to be thought about for the future.
I was interested in what was said about British Railways. Some hard things were said. I was asked to knock some sense into them. Thankfully, the Government have no responsibility for the individual management policy of British Railways. I have very little hope or confidence in an organisation which forces the travelling public to drink coffee out of cardboard cups, as I shall unfortunately experience when on the train to Birmingham in about half an hour. The hon. Member for Ealing, Acton, in his campaign to get British Railways to make facilities available for cyclists, might be able to do better than some of us have managed to do.
British Railways have an obligation to have a proper charging policy. My Department in general supports the line taken by hon. Members. Indeed, my officials wrote to British Railways asking what their policy was. They wrote on 30th January and had a reply on 4th March. I cannot convince the House that the reply adds up to very much. I find it difficult to think that we shall be able to encourage many people to take their cycles on trains if we allow differential charging region by region. That is

what British Railways say they intend to do.
I agree that British Railways should make parking space available for bicycles just as they do for motor cars, although many people feel that the provision for car parking is inadequate. Indeed, space for cycles is totally non-existent in many areas.
Hon. Members have declared their interests. I forgot to declare mine. I speak also as Patron of the British Cycle Federation and President of the British Professional Cyclists' Association. I hope that hon. Members will understand the basic support that I give to them.
I think that we must have a little sympathy for British Railways. The brake van capacity in trains has been reduced because of the change of traffic. Therefore, the opportunities for large numbers of people to take cycles on trains is also reduced. I can only hope that the cycling organisations and hon. Members will not aim all their arrows at the Government, but, having regard to the distinction in management policy which this House has always placed on the nationalised industries, will contact those in charge of the managerial affairs of British Railways.
There is something to be said for traffic lanes. I believe that these can be provided better in new towns like Stevenage where they are starting from scratch. It is difficult to provide separate traffic lanes in the middle of Birmingham, Manchester or London, although it would be helpful and interesting to have some experiments in that direction.
I cannot accede to the request that my Department should set up a separate cycling advisory unit. We are being asked to cut down on the numbers of civil servants. We already have a traffic advisory unit. I believe that traffic should be looked at as a whole. It would not help to have an advisory unit for cycling and to divorce cycling from other traffic considerations and advice. I think that it would be sensible for the traffic advisory unit to turn its attention more to the possibilities inherent in cycling.
Reference has been made to the Royal parks and whether facilities could be made available for cyclists. This is beginning to happen. This summer, for the first time, a special route of four and


a half miles is being provided in Richmond Park. This circular route is likely to be attractive to cyclists. Use can also be made of other roads across the middle of the park which are not open to cars. I do not suggest that is the end of the road. At any rate, it is an interesting start that progress is being in that respect in Richmond Park.
The hon. Gentleman also raised an interesting question about whether industry and the House would change the mileage allowance facility. The logic of what he said was that if we paid people a bigger allowance to cycle than to ride in a car, we should pay them an even bigger allowance to walk. That would lead to a very dicey situation. I do not think that hon. Members generally would support that proposition. Certainly I do not think that people in industry would support it.

Sir George Young: I hope that the Minister did not misunderstand what I said. I did not suggest that the bicycle allowance should be higher than the car allowance. I suggested that the car allowance should be reduced to provide the savings to pay people an albeit modest allowance to travel by bicycle.

Mr. Howell: Speaking on behalf of 98 per cent. of hon. Members who find the present mileage allowance totally inadequate to cover the cost of driving their cars on parliamentary business, I must say that I cannot encourage the hon. Gentleman in that direction. However, it was a brave try and an interesting suggestion.
Returning to the question of road safety and education, to which I attach great importance, there are three development projects already being undertaken. The RoSPA Road Safety Education Development Unit is totally funded by the Department at a cost of £36,000 a year over three years. It consists of three seconded teachers and a research director, and its aims are to disseminate and assess road safety teaching materials. Policy is decided by a steering committee of educationists and road safety experts which is chaired by a member of my Department.
The Transport and Road Research Laboratory curriculum unit at Reading University is organised on a research contract by TRRL at a cost of about £20,000 a year over three years. It consists of two researchers aided by a small team of teachers and is producing a curriculum for schools in road safety, which I am sure will be welcomed by all hon. Members. The first stage of its report is in draft.
The Department contributes about £6,000 a year to the evaluation side of the Health Education Unit which is mainly funded by the Health Education Council at a teachers' training college in Clacton. It, too, has a three-year programme and is producing a curriculum for schools in health education which contains a section on road safety. The cycling aspect of it might be further strengthened. Arrangements are now being made to publish the first stage of its report, and the second stage is in draft.

Mr. Steen: Will the Minister confirm that he will ask his Department to consider the possibility of introducing cycling lanes in London and other major cities? Would it be possible to convert existing bus lanes so that cyclists might use them, or is that already Government policy?

Mr. Howell: Bus lanes are matters for local authorities. The Government have no power over what local authorities do about the roads in London. The best way to deal with the matter is to ask the Traffic Advisory Unit of the Department to give increasing attention to the need to encourage people to cycle, and the best way to do that is by making cycling on the roads safer. That is the key to the issue.
I accept that large savings in petrol and energy would be effected if we could get more people to travel by cycle. An even more important consideration from my point of view as the Minister responsible for sport is that hardly anything would improve the nation's health more than getting people out of cars and buses and on to bicycles. One realises from the increase in the incidence of deaths from


coronary and heart trouble how unfit the nation is. There would be dual benefits for the nation if we could proceed even a short distance along the road which the hon. Gentleman wishes us to take.
I hope that we shall return to this subject many times in future and that this

debate will have the effect of encouraging Ministries and local authorities to adopt a forward-looking policy.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-five minutes to Five o'clock.